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Twin Voyager Probes 25 Years In Flight
pbranes writes: "CNN has an article discussing the 25th anniversary of both of the Voyager spacecraft and what the next few years hold for the spacecraft. Scientists believe that they can maintain contact with the spacecraft for at least 20 more years, and they hope that the spacecraft passes the heliopause, the boundary for interstellar space, during this time." We've mentioned the long-term prospects of these probes before; it's not long until they may meet Termination Shock.
They know they are close, but they don't know how close. They know this because when the radiation from a solar flare went past each probe, they looked at the time it took to get between voyager 1 and 2. Then a short time later they heard the radio noise of the solar flare hitting the heliopause. This tells them that they aren't very far away.
I believe that even though there are supposed to be very many objects in the Oort cloud, as with the asteroid belt the objects are so spread out that the odds of hitting anything are very small. This is also assuming that the Oort cloud exists, and if so, whether it is as populated as expected.