If a car stays in the garage for decades, it will hardly move forward. But that did not happen in the case of Voyager 1, which after 1 years - and following an order sent to it by NASA engineers - activated its backup propulsion engines and which had not been used since 37.
Voyager 1, the most distant from Earth and the fastest space device of NASA, is the only human construction that since August 2012 has reached the interstellar space beyond the borders of our solar system, where its "territory" stops Of our Sun.
The spacecraft, which has been traveling for 40 years, uses small propellers to orient itself so that it can communicate with the Earth. These motors are started for milliseconds, as long as it takes to properly turn its antenna in front of our planet.
Now, controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have been able to use four backup propulsion engines, which have been hypnotized since November 1980, when the spacecraft passed close to Saturn. According to Susan Dodd, head of management at Voyager, the use of spare engines "will allow us to extend the life of Voyager 1 by two to three years".