Voyager 1 uses its thrusters to stay pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands and send back science data, but after 47 years in space some of the fuel tubes had become clogged.

The Voyager 1 probe was first launched by Nasa in 1977 on a path that eventually led both it and its sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, outside the solar system altogether.

Each are on their own journey into the cosmos, with Voyager 1 travelling more than 24 billion kilometres from Earth, and Voyager 2 more than 19 billion kilometres. Both have flown past Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 also flew past Uranus and Neptune.

Being Nasa’s longest-running spacecraft, they have both faced problems due to longevity. In October 2023, Voyager 1’s onboard computer was sending back garbled status reports and so Nasa’s engineers, based at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, had to send a software patch to fix the issue.

Now its engineers have successfully mitigated an issue with the Voyager 1’s thrusters...