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35 Years Later, Voyager 1 Is Heading For the Stars

Posted by Soulskill on from the watch-out-for-black-holes dept.

DevotedSkeptic writes with news that today is the 35th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch. (Voyager 2 reached the same anniversary on August 20.) Voyager 1 is roughly 18 billion kilometers from the sun, slowly but steadily pushing through the heliosheath and toward interstellar space. From the article: "Perhaps no one on Earth will relish the moment more than 76-year-old Ed Stone, who has toiled on the project from the start. 'We're anxious to get outside and find what's out there,' he said. When NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 first rocketed out of Earth's grip in 1977, no one knew how long they would live. Now, they are the longest-operating spacecraft in history and the most distant, at billions of miles from Earth but in different directions. ... Voyager 1 is in uncharted celestial territory. One thing is clear: The boundary that separates the solar system and interstellar space is near, but it could take days, months or years to cross that milestone. ... These days, a handful of engineers diligently listen for the Voyagers from a satellite campus not far from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the spacecraft. The control room, with its cubicles and carpeting, could be mistaken for an insurance office if not for a blue sign overhead that reads 'Mission Controller' and a warning on a computer: 'Voyager mission critical hardware. Please do not touch!' There are no full-time scientists left on the mission, but 20 part-timers analyze the data streamed back. Since the spacecraft are so far out, it takes 17 hours for a radio signal from Voyager 1 to travel to Earth. For Voyager 2, it takes about 13 hours."

4 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Has it made it ? by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you look at this picture, it sure does look like Voyager 1 may have left the solar system (in a plasma sense) in late August. (In other words, it is no longer seeing protons from the solar wind, which means it may be outside of the Sun's bubble of plasma, and into the interstellar medium.

    If so, it has impeccable timing.

    1. Re:Has it made it ? by Immerman · · Score: 5, Informative

      As they state, it is currently within the heliosheath - the turbulent boundary layer between Sol's plasma bubble and the interstellar medium, so it's outside the region thoroughly dominated by the sun's influence, but not yet within the interstellar medium. Quite an interesting region in it's own right, but not terribly informative of either bounding environment.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  2. Some kind of dupe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Voyager seems to be "heading for the stars" once every six months:
    - http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/06/15/0115226/new-signs-voyager-is-nearing-interstellar-space
    - http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/14/012219/voyager-and-the-coming-great-hiatus-in-deep-space
    - http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/12/07/2127247/voyager-1-exits-our-solar-system
    - http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/2314203/voyager-set-to-enter-interstellar-space
    - http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1451216/voyager-1-beyond-solar-wind

  3. Re:Voyager 2 launched first? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    So Voyager 2 was launched weeks before Voyager 1? Was the launch schedule changed at the last minute?

    No. Per this:

    http://space.about.com/od/spaceexplorationhistory/p/voyager1.htm

    "Voyager 1 was launched after Voyager 2, but because of a faster route, it exited the asteroid belt earlier than its twin. It began its Jovian imaging mission in April 1978 at a range of 265 million kilometers from the planet; images sent back by January the following year indicated that Jupiter's atmosphere was more turbulent than during the Pioneer flybys in 1973 and 1974."