Quake3World

Only about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, in the direction to our constellation Aquarius, TRAPPIST-1 – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf. It’s so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun. According to a NASA statement:

The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.

SoM wrote:i know some of you are into this stuff but this is awesome

Memphis wrote:

looks lovely. we should move there and fuck it all up (°_°)

Since 2014, engineers have noticed that the thrusters Voyager 1 has been using to orient the spacecraft, called "attitude control thrusters," have been degrading. Over time, the thrusters require more puffs to give off the same amount of energy. At 13 billion miles from Earth, there's no mechanic shop nearby to get a tune-up.

The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to study the problem. Chris Jones, Robert Shotwell, Carl Guernsey and Todd Barber analyzed options and predicted how the spacecraft would respond in different scenarios. They agreed on an unusual solution: Try giving the job of orientation to a set of thrusters that had been asleep for 37 years.

Billions of miles from Earth, at the edge of interstellar space, a long-dormant part of a far-flung spacecraft came to life this week.

After 37 years of disuse, a set of thrusters aboard Voyager 1 activated on Wednesday, firing up humanity's farthest-flung spacecraft and hopefully giving it a longer life than it had before.

"With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager, said in a statement.