Saturday, December 2, 2017

I Canna Give Ye Any More, Cap'n!

The firing of Voyager 1's back control thrusters may be as close as we get for awhile to Scotty telling Captain Kirk he's at maximum power, since the spacecraft has actually left our solar system and is as qualified to be called interstellar as the Enterprise.

NASA scientists wanted to try to fire the jets as a backup to Voyager's attitude control thrusters, which are getting on in years and not as reliable as they used to be. They're used to keep the communications antenna aligned with Earth -- but at Voyager's immense distances, even microscopic errors in the thrust could mean a loss of communication from the spacecraft. Scientists wondered if the back thrusters, which hadn't been fired in almost 40 years, could be used instead.

So they labored over ancient computer code, designed a plan and sent the signal to Voyager to test it. More than 19 hours later, they received data that showed the plan would work. For awhile, anyway, as the back thrusters have to be heated a bit to work and there's only so much power available to do that.

Of course, this is what NASA's saying in public. Because if the thrusters were really set to fire in some kind of automatic response to a nearby alien spaceship, do you really think they would tell us?

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