NASA’s Voyager 1 is finally back online!

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NASA finally has its Voyager 1 spacecraft back online. That’s no small feat, seeing as the almost 50-year-old space probe is roughly 15 billion miles away from Earth. It took almost half a year for the US space agency to fully reestablish contact with the most distant spacecraft from Earth.

Rocket Lab also achieved a big milestone, launching the 50th mission of its Electron rocket. The company has some big plans in store, including launching the first private mission to reach another planet. Let’s take a look at the details below.

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AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SPOTLIGHT

Voyager 1 is finally back online

Roughly six months ago, Voyager 1 started sending NASA unintelligible, garbled data. It wasn’t an alien communicating through the spacecraft. Instead, it was simply an almost 50-year-old piece of hardware showing its age.

Voyager 1 is roughly 15.1 billion miles (24.3 billion km) from Earth, making it the furthest human-made object from Earth – Voyage 2 is flying a couple billion miles closer to our planet.

This week, NASA announced the spacecraft is finally conducting science operations again. Some minor updates are still required for smooth operations, though. The US space agency stated that it needs to resynchronize “timekeeping software in the spacecraft’s three onboard computers and [do] maintenance on the digital tape recorder.”

These tweaks will allow Voyager 1 to once again carry out commands and record data for the plasma wave receiver which detects vibrations in the outer space plasma. The plasma wave receiver uses sensors and antennas that pick up signals the human ear can’t hear.

Voyager 1 is flying through space at 38,210 miles per hour. It’s not NASA’s fastest spacecraft, though. The space agency’s Parker Solar Probe is orbiting the sun at a staggering 394,736 miles per hour.

Both Voyager spacecraft are powered by nuclear batteries, also known as radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Incredibly, Voyager 1 only needs 12 watts of power – the same as your average refrigerator – to beam data all the way back to Earth. That data takes roughly 24 hours to travel the 15 billion miles back to Earth.

AERO BULLETIN

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket flies for the 50th time

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket flew for the 50th time this week. The small satellite launch vehicle might not be as much of a powerhouse as SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but it has positioned itself as a reliable workhorse.

This week’s launch carried five Internet of Things satellites to orbit. Here are some of the Rocket Lab’s most important missions to date, as well as a couple historic launches it has planned for the future.

NASA’s CAPSTONE mission

In June 2022, Rocket Lab launched NASA’s CAPSTONE mission. That mission launched the first-ever CubeSat small satellite to reach the Moon. It’s goal is to test an experimental lunar orbit called the near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO).

The mission could have a massive impact on future human space exploration. That’s because the NRHO might be used by NASA’s lunar Gaterway station. That lunar outpost will help NASA maintain a permanent presence on the Moon. That will, in turn, pave the way for crewed missions to Mars.

Rocket Lab’s ‘There and Back Again’

With a nod to the Lord of the Rings, Rocket Lab’s ‘There and Back Again’ mission captured a rocket booster out of the sky using a helicopter for the very first time.

Rocket Lab had planned to make this part of its reusability process. However, the helicopter pilot was forced to drop the booster shortly after capture due to “different load characteristics” than were expected from tests.

Rocket Lab has decided not to use the alternative reusability method. Instead, it plucks boosters out of the ocean after they perform a parachute-assisted reentry. Still, the mission showed Rocket Lab’s penchant for setting itself apart from its peers by using ambitious methods and technologies.

The Venus Life Finder mission

Rocket Lab hopes to send a self-funded private mission to Venus in the not-too-distant future. The company’s Venus mission will eventually send a Photon probe to our neighboring planet to search for signs of alien life in its upper atmosphere.

While the mission was originally set to launch last year, it has been postponed several times. When it does finally take flight, it could make Rocket Lab the first private company to send a mission to another planet.