CNN makes a stupid science error but there's no comment section to complain about it.

[Towlie]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/01/us/voyager-1-thrusters-fired-first-time-since-1980/index.html

Voyager 1 spacecraft thrusters fired up for first time since 1980

NASA scientists needed to reorient the 40-year-old Voyager 1 -- the space agency's farthest spacecraft -- so its antenna would point toward Earth, 13 billion miles away.

...

Tuesday, engineers fired up the thrusters and waited eagerly to find out whether the plan was successful. They got their answer 19 hours and 35 minutes later, the time it took for the results to reach Earth.

Actually, if it was 13 billion miles away they would have had to wait twice that long.

[Ptah]

1. I don't see an error.

[Yonnie3]

3. The article is poorly worded

They would know 19 hours after the propulsion fired.

From the time they transmitted the signal until they knew it worked it would be twice that. 19 out and 19 back.

I can't see the OP and don't recall the minutes.

[MousePlayingDaffodil]

2. Well, NASA made the same stupid error . . .

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-fires-up-thrusters-after-37

[Thor_MN]

4. There is no mistake.

It took 19 hours, 35 minutes after the thrusters fired to find out they worked. Exactly as stated. Not explicitly specified was it also took 19hours, 35 minutes for the command to get there. Which is what is making you think they made a mistake.

But the time span they specified was "the time it took for the results to reach Earth." which was accurately reported as 19 hours, 35 minutes.

[Towlie]

5. No, you're all wrong! Nobody can say exactly when the thrusters fired.

The only time interval that can be sensibly stated is the wait between sending the signal and receiving the acknowledgement, and that's double the figure given.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

[OilemFirchen]

6. You don't think the return signal was time-stamped?

Uhm. Okay.

Maybe you're right, though. Perhaps the signal bounced off the edge of the earth a few times before reception.

[Thor_MN]

7. No, you are wrong.

It took 19 hours, 35 minutes for the signal to get there, some amount of time for the thrusters to actually fire, and 19 hours, 35 minutes for Voyager to report the success back, just as reported.

You seem to understand that the total time from command being sent to success reported back is twice the amount of time(plus time for thrusters to actually fire and generate the success message), why is it a struggle to accept that the time for the signal to get back is half the total(minus time for thrusters to actually fire and generate the success message)?

Do you think that the time for the signal to get there is different than the time to get a signal back? Voyager is not traveling at a speed that is significant to relativity, it's just a long way from here. Say that the time from the command being received by Voyager's antenna to thruster fire, to signal being sent out the antenna was an improbably long hour. That means Voyager 1 traveled around 61 thousand kilometers in the interval, 0.2 light seconds, an amount irrelevant to the distance that Voyager 1 is from Earth. And the time for the command to have been performed would have been reported back with the success message. It would take 0.2 seconds longer for the message to travel back, an irrelevant amount compared to the precision reported, namely 19 hours, 35 minutes.

The story is accurate as reported.