Voyager 1 spacecraft thrusters fired up for first time since 1980
- Published in Headline News
(CNN)It's a good idea to have a backup plan, especially in interstellar space.NASA scientists needed to reorient the 40-year-old Voyager 1 -- the space agency's farthest spacecraft -- so its antenna would point toward Earth, 13 billion miles away. But the "attitude control thrusters," the first option to make the spacecraft turn in space, have been wearing out