The space Probe Voyager 1, the object manufactured by the human being furthest from Earth , received this week a very special order from its creators, the first trajectory correction in 37 years, something that did not happen since his encounter with Saturn in 1980.

If there is an inspiring spacecraft that is Voyager 1 . It was launched on September 5, 1977 from the Kennedy Space Center of NASA aboard a Titan IIIE rocket. Its mission is to locate and study the limits of the solar system, including the Kuiper belt and the exploration of nearby interstellar space. “A bottle thrown into the cosmic ocean” as defined by the great scientific popularizer Carl Sagan.

Although its original mission was to visit Jupiter and Saturn and in fact was the first probe to provide detailed images of the satellites of these planets, its greatest value (more symbolic than scientific) is found inside it as it transports a very special object in case an advanced civilization finds it someday. It is the Voyager’s Golden Record, a gramophone record with the “Sounds of the Earth” that portray the diversity of life and culture of our planet, selected by a committee presided over by Sagan.

Voyager 1 does not rest and after several gravitational accelerations it is currently about 21,000 million kilometers from Earth already in interstellar space. However, we can still communicate with Voyager 1. Last week NASA engineers did something very special. They ordered the ship to fire the set of four trajectory propellers to determine its ability to orient the spacecraft.

It had been 37 years since a similar maneuver was carried out, since Voyager 1 passed through Saturn. The order used pulses of 10 milliseconds and it took 19 hours and 35 minutes to arrive and the same time to receive the response. After almost four decades of activity the Aerojet Rocketdyne propellers worked perfectly.

The change of trajectory must allow to extend communication with the probe for a few years . Voyager 1 (like its sister Voyager 2) has exceeded its expected lifetime for communications. It is expected that the three small RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) will provide power to communicate with the probes until 2025. Voyager 1 already has a place among the stars.

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