Voyager 1 fires TCM thrusters for the first time in 37 years

These attitude control thrusters perform small but critical adjustments that keep the spacecraft's communication antenna oriented with the Earth. A group of JPL propulsion experts assembled by the Voyager team proposed an "unusual solution" - to test the trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) thrusters Voyager used during planetary and moon encounters as it passed through the solar system. But the last time these thrusters had been used was during the Saturn flyby - in November 1980.