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Voyager 1, So Close To Interstellar Space That We Can Taste It!
mphall21 writes "Voyager 1 is nearing the edge of the 'magnetic highway' of our solar system and scientists believe this is the final area the space probe must cross before entering interstellar space. The Voyager team infers this region is still inside of our heliosphere because the direction of the magnetic field has not changed. The direction of this field is expected to change when Voyager goes into interstellar space. 'Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway,' said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. 'We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager.' Moving at 10.5 miles per second, the space probe is the most distant man-made object from Earth. The space craft has been in operation for 35 years and receives regular commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network."
This is truly a triumph of modern science and unfortunately we do not dream big like this anymore. We are limited to our own backyard. The moon, Mars, etc. Such a shame.
What does interstellar space taste like?
I was 17 when this thing launched...remember it well, all the hoop-de-doo about that gold disk. Either the Klingons will get it, or maybe the Borg?
We have enough trouble littering and leaving our useless garbage behind here on Earth. Now we are also littering in inter-stellar space.
Do you know how freaking big the ticket for this will be?
...stories like this just emphasize the major suckitude of the current US space policy in that our current glory is tech from 30 years in the past. What'll we be talking about 30 years in the future?
BEEP-BEEEE*squish*EEEeeeeep!
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35 years and still running (I had a 25 year old Toyota which did the same). What happened to us engineers? Where did we go wrong?
Remember years ago when it was first announced that Voyager was entering interstellar space? There was another announcement a year or two ago and now they are saying it's really really close. When I was growing up NASA was considered the most reliable department the government had. After all the budget cuts they've been so starved for big announcements they keep jumping the gun. I know this wasn't out of NASA but it's still a NASA project. The real news in the last week was Mercury but it got buried under higher profile non stories. It just breaks my heart to see this. If they want news releases give us more rover stories! We've got two functional rovers again on Mars and the older one gets no attention and the new one has been all but forgotten. I've seen some stunning images because I cruise geek sites but the general public sees nothing. NASA has got to get better at playing the press game. People still support Mars exploration but look at the ISS as the poster child for press boondoggles. It's been treated more like a secret military project in the press. It's been fully functional for years but other than stories about possibly abandoning it which started weeks after it was completed when is the last time the regular press had a story about what was actually going on in the space station itself, I'm not talking resupply missions. I'll bet the average person couldn't name a single accomplishment or even test run on the space station. I'd bet most people have completely forgotten about it. What's the point of all the science if no one ever hears about it??? Botched press releases and dead silence is slowly killing NASA.
This is truly a triumph of modern science and unfortunately we do not dream big like this anymore. We are limited to our own backyard. The moon, Mars, etc. Such a shame.
If the "we" in question is NASA, your assertion is true.
However, if the "we" denotes the human race, nope, the dream is still on, and there are still people working towards achieving even greater goals.
People in Brazil, in Japan, in India, in China are working on projects that may take us (and the "us" here means human race) further.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I will think a little thought for lonely Voyager.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Well, it's been close to entering interstellar space for the last 10 - 15 years. Are they just going to keep re-releasing this story every year?
The biggests mistake that America made was "free-trade" and dropping their tarifs and duties.
It is only a mistake if you are trying to keep one country on top of all the others. Free-trade has made the WORLD a better place, at the expense of the USA. Now it's up to you to decide if that is a good or bad thing.
The average density of the universe is about one proton per cubic meter. The vast majority of the visible universe is pristine vacuum. Plus, nearly every galaxy holds at its core a matter-disposal rip-heap of eternal safe-keeping.
Bear in mind that we now know there's a very small leak into the surrounding environment at around 60 nano-kelvin (*). Before we route too much of our crap to the galactic disposal unit, perhaps we should learn from our mistakes on the slimy blue marble and perform a rigorous environmental impact study on anthropogenic black-hole warming, just in case bumping it up to 61 nano-kelvins triggers a dark matter landslide. (By the "it's all about us, every time, and in every way" anthropic principle, every bulk coefficient of our local environment is fluttering around a precarious and exquisitely tuned value optimal to survival as we presently know it.)
(*) For simplicity I use the Hawking temperature for a solar mass black hole. From the equation at Wikipedia, this appears to scale inversely with mass. Possibly the right temperature involves division by another factor of 4 million to account for the correct mass of the galactic darth Timbit (local idiom for doughnut hole). I'm getting 15 femto-kelvins without a napkin. Let's not be brash and mess with this number anthropogenically without really thinking things through, to solve some minor problem with space-based pollution in some gossamer filigree of the pristine vacuum.
One would think it might be easier just to toss our junk in the direction of the Local Void. This, however, amounts to carting your garbage uphill.
Wikipedia: The Milky Way's velocity away from the Local Void is 270 kilometres per second (600,000 mph). Voids are hugely repulsive.
What sort of commands are we sending?
"Keep going"
"Just keep going"
"Don't turn around and come back"
"Just a little bit further - just keep going"
"Nearly there - keep going"
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
What's with all the complaints? How is this not news for nerds?
We thought the heliosphere should have ended earlier. It (surprisingly, without sarcasm) hasn't. It's explained within the same summary what the expected metrics for such a boundary should be (a change in the direction of the magnetic field), as well as a quantification of the closeness (that extra-solar particles are making forays into Voyager's sensors) of said boundary.
Add a dash of the fact that we are able to communicate through outer space with four-decades old technology, and I'm really not seeing what there is to bitch about.
Oh and the Mars rover? Yeah it's still being analyzed whether the "complex hydrocarbons" are actually organic compounds, just like how it was still being analyzed whether the timing glitch in the LHC was a violation of general relativity. That is speculation, it's not news (at least not for nerds).
We're not talking about reaching the edge of the Solar system, we are talking about our first foray into interstellar space. And interstellar space starts beyond the heliopause, not the Oort Cloud. That's why Voyager's cosmic ray measurements have been so important.
On a side note, it looks as if Voyager 2 may be reaching the edge of the part of the heliosphere it is traveling through. The high-energy particles (which are coming from the Sun) have been steadily decreasing the past few months.
well..."The Solar System consists of the Sun and its planetary system of eight planets, their moons, and other non-stellar objects." So that happened a while ago.
Between the solar system and interstellar space is the heliosphere (which encompasses the solar system, bordered/demarcated by the heliopause).
To make things more ambiguous (along the GPs point), "Interstellar space": Voyager 1 is 17 light hours from us (so under 0.2% the distance to Proxima Centauri). Not sure when or how they decided interstellar space starts before the Oort Cloud (1 ly away).
A justification could be made that astronomically-scaled systems may have plenty of in-between objects that are far enough away to be considered interstellar space. However, when defining an interstellar comet: "At present, an interstellar comet can only be detected if it passes through our solar system, and could be distinguished from an Oort cloud comet by its strongly hyperbolic trajectory (indicating that it is not gravitationally bound to the Sun)." - so if interstellar comets are not interstellar unless they originate from outside the Oort Cloud, I don't see why we consider Voyager 1 even remotely approaching interstellar space when it's still so far from the Oort Cloud.
And reversibly, due to Voyager 1's known one-way trajectory out/away from the Sun, it could be considered not gravitationally bound to the Sun. So is or will be interstellar if not destroyed before.
Anyway, I think 'exiting the heliosphere' is the point of the article. 'Interstellar space' is a sensationalist term in the headline.
The defining aspect is the medium the craft is flying through. The solar wind has dropped from supersonic to nil, and the Sun's magnetic field is about to be superseded by the overall galactic magnetic field. I'd say that's a pretty good definition of transitioning from the solar system's medium to the interstellar medium, since the space the craft is floating through has changed qualitatively.
I guess it's a bit like the difference between the boundary of the Earth's atmosphere, and the orbit of the Moon. The Moon is gravitationally bound to the Earth, but the Earth's atmosphere ends well before you get to the Moon. Where do you say the boundary of space is as you leave the Earth?
Program Intellivision!