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Voyager 1 Sends Messages from the Edge

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish dept.

dalmozian writes "NASA's Latest News about the Voyager 1 is being run on Sci-Tech. The Voyager has passed into the border region at the edge of the solar system and now is sending back information about this never-before-explored area, say scientists at the University of Maryland. From the article: 'Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft Voyager 2 are now part of a NASA Interstellar Mission to explore the outermost edge of the sun's domain and beyond. Both Voyagers are capable of returning scientific data from a full range of instruments, with adequate electrical power and attitude control propellant to keep operating until 2020.'" The proof of crossing the termination shock was covered earlier this year but now we can see the actual data.

2 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Why are they cancelling funding...? by barawn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I actually got to see this data presented at a cosmic ray conference this summer. There are a few things you have to realize:

    • This is the only astronomical shock we are able to study closely
    • There are a lot of things we don't understand about shocks
    • Voyager 2 is still working, with better instruments, and will reach the termination shock early
    • We're seeing things we never, never expected


    For instance, on the last bit, we expected to see cosmic rays from the termination shock, because shocks accelerate particles. We see them. But they don't appear to be coming from the shock. They're coming from somewhere else that we don't know. We see another set of cosmic rays (with a different spectrum) that we don't understand at all - we just call them "anomalous cosmic rays."

    Also, inside the heliosphere, Voyager 1 kept crossing magnetic domains (so a needle on a compass would swing back and forth) periodically. It was expected after the shock that those domain switches would keep happening, much much faster. That didn't happen. In fact, the domain switches stopped. We don't understand why. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

    This is our only probe and our only example of a large astronomical shock. It's full of information about how the Universe produces such violent outbursts like supernovae, or gamma ray bursts. We need to keep studying this.
  2. FOS by oliverthered · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Couldn't they just open source Voyager and get a number of nations to fork the bill?

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.