Thread by @ssaig

Here is a small story about Voyager 2.

Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. As of today its over 17 light hours away. That means light which travels at 3,00,000 km/second takes 17 hours to reach it.

[THREAD] 🪐

Earlier this year, Voyager 2’s engine unexpectedly shut down.

Voyager 2 is almost at the edge of the solar system crossing the heliosphere now. And you can imagine the distance. Actually you can’t. It’s far.

On Jan 25, 2020, Voyager 2 attempted to calibrate it’s magnetic field instrument and failed badly. The probe drew additional power.

That triggered a failsafe that shut down it’s functionality. Voyager 2 has an array of solar panels but NASA knew this was useless once the probe ventures into the unknowns.

So, the engineer’s fitted the probe with radioisotope thermoelectric generators which converts heat ..

From radioactive decay into electricity.

For the last 40 years, this is what runs Vovager 1 and 2. But as the heat got weaker, NASA was forced to shut down some of it’s modules including the camera. They made the failsafe to make sure that one component malfunction does not consume more power.

And in a incredible feat of engineering, NASA managed to diagonise the probe’s issue and brought it back online. The most unbelievable aspect of this is that each command from @NASAJPL takes 17 hours to travel and reach the Probe and another 17 hours to reach back.

That means the engineers had to wait almost 34 hours ( one and half day) each time they sent a code to see if it worked or not! Can you imagine that level of patience in 2020?

Just a reminder that we need not look further than space travel for the marvellous engineering