Remote revamp

Upgrading your desktop computer is hard enough, but NASA has rejuvenated a computer that’s twice as far away as the planet Pluto. Last week engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, activated the back-up star tracker and Sun sensor on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which was launched in 1977. The back-up systems were included in case the original navigational system failed, but engineers hope they will give the spacecraft a new lease of life as it begins to map the edge of the Solar System, where the influence of the solar wind gives way to interstellar space.