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Voyager 1 Officially Exits Our Solar System
An anonymous reader writes "A new study released today (abstract) indicates that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first man-made object to exit our solar system. Instrumentation data sent back to NASA indicate the historic event likely occurred on August 25, 2012, evidenced by drastic changes in radiation levels as the craft ventured past the heliopause. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Voyager 1 has actually made it to true interstellar space, or whether it has entered a separate, undefined region beyond our solar system. Either way, the achievement is truly monumental. 'It's outside the normal heliosphere, I would say that. We're in a new region,' said Bill Webber, professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. 'And everything we're measuring is different and exciting.'"
Update: 03/20 20:44 GMT by S : Reader skade88 points out that the JPL Voyager team is not so sure: "It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space. In December 2012, the Voyager science team reported that Voyager 1 is within a new region called 'the magnetic highway' where energetic particles changed dramatically. A change in the direction of the magnetic field is the last critical indicator of reaching interstellar space and that change of direction has not yet been observed." So we'll probably be hearing about this again in a couple years.
I would say that "true interstellar space" was "outside the gravitational effect of our sun" but, technically, that's nowhere in the universe.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
V'ger overlord!
You did really well.
Of course, neither probe in the ST movies was Voyager 1.
ST:TMP was Voyager 6
STV:TFF was either Pioneer 10 or Pioneer 11.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The Voyager project's chief scientist says not just yet: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-107 Also, here's a fairly recent video lecture he gave on the topic that gives some good details: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.cfm?year=2012&month=9
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What I don't understand is why the linked stories don't mention how big a change in radiation was experienced. Are we talking 10%, or a factor of 10? How about a curve while we are at it -- could be it is gradual, could be sharp, could be a hockey stick -- curve us please.
I come here for the love
Sorry if this sounds dumb to some of the astronomy cracks, but from what I gathered so far from astrophysics is that there are different speeds for leaving the "area" of a body. IIRC it is called the sphere of influence, where a certain celestial body is the one that affects me the most. Like here on Earth, obviously, it's that planet, despite the Sun being a LOT bigger and hence having a lot more gravity, but since I'm sitting on that rock, Earth is it for me. Now, when thrusting away from Earth, at some point I leave its SOI and the Sun will take over as the main body defining my "main body" towards I move relatively. And provided I do not end up in the SOI of any of the planets or moons in our solar system, that's how it's going to stay until I am so far away from the sun that something else will be my frame of reference.
So wouldn't "leaving the system" technically require exactly that? That I enter another body (or bodies) sphere of influence? And, another thing, does Voyager actually have enough push to leave the system for good? As far as I know it does take quite a bit more oumph to leave the Sun's SOI than Earth's.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, they are really really really sure that something is really really different now. They have noted two orders of magnitude changes in their measurements so they are in a different, rather well delineated region, that doesn't match their expectations but is clearly not the same as what they saw when they where clearly inside the solar system.
Of course... It could just be the space craft starting to malfunction... Or some alien life form has taken it over and has decided to mess with our minds... I'm sure there will be conspiracy theories abounding on this... But it seems pretty clear to me, YES Voyager 1 has passed into some new region of space...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Latter Day Voyager One-ist: "I respect your beliefs but I must disagree. Two thousand years ago, Voyager One did not exit the solar system on the 35th year of our Lord 12,980 days after His Holy Launch. It would not be until ..." ..." ..." ... the ghost of Voyager Two should be passing by this space station in the next few minutes. We will ride it all to that great ground control center in deep space!!!"
Reformed Good Gamma Rays Church of the Accurate Voyager One-ist: "HERESY! Where I come from, we have reserved black holes for the likes of your foul and vile lie spreading mouth. Prepare for battle and death
Latter Day Voyager One-ist: "But I am merely repeating the preachings of Voyager One's one true manager, Edward Stone, who is one and the same with Voyager One!"
Reformed Good Gamma Rays Church of the Accurate Voyager One-ist: "Your Edward Stone was a false prophet and copycat of the original true manager that is lost to the ages!"
Latter Day Voyager One-ist: "Impossible, it was written that the oracle confirmed His information before being unplugged."
Reformed Good Gamma Rays Church of the Accurate Voyager One-ist: "How dare you bear false witness against the Wayback Machine (Voyager rest its all knowing soul)?!"
Latter Day Voyager One-ist: "Ask any Unified Voyager Two-ist, they agree with our views
Unified Voyager Two-ist: "Okay, everybody, drink your kool-aid now
My work here is dung.
The fact that this was launched in 1977 and is still operating 36 years later -- 33 years after its primary mission (Jupiter, Saturn encounter) ended in 1980 -- is an achievement in itself and testament to its design and build quality. According to Voyager 1 the 3 RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) on Voyager 1 will continue to provide sufficient power for some operations until around 2025.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I hadn't realized our sun was in heliopause. That explains the hot flashes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persis_Khambatta
http://www.google.com/search?q=persis+khambatta&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&gl=US&tbm=isch&nomo=1&biw=480&bih=295
Voyager 1 won't escape the Oort cloud (really the outer Oort cloud) for another 14,000 - 28,000 years. (Probably due to running out of power in the next 10 to 15 years.)
Perhaps I have misinterpreted your statement, but are you aware of Newton's First Law of Motion? Voyager has no need for power to continue its journey; running out of power will have no effect on its velocity.
My guess is that, aside from attitude adjustment, Voyager hasn't fired its thrusters since its encounter with Titan in 1980.
No, it wasn't the Eniac.
"There are three different computer types on the Voyager spacecraft and there are two of each kind. Total number of words among the six computers is about 32K."*
[*] - http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html
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http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/index.html http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/images/voy_traj.jpg And you can simulate the entire flight and its current position in 3D at http://eyes.nasa.gov/
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I've wondered, would it benefit us in any way to send something out perpendicular to the orbital plane? I realize you don't get to swing by points of interest, and you don't get the slingshot effect of doing so either, but still, just curious. Thoughts?
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
"My God, it's full of stars!"
Table-ized A.I.
To clear up any possible confusion, Voyager 1 doesn't need to enter the "sphere of influence" of another body to avoid falling back to the Sun. It has already escaped the Sun's gravitational field, long ago and by a large factor.
On September 9, 2012, Voyager 1 was measured to be 121.798 AU from the Sun and traveling at 17.043 km/s. At that distance, the escape velocity from the Sun is only 3.817 km/s, which Voyager 1's speed exceeds handsomely.
The dear thing isn't coming back, at least not without help. :-)
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
There's a good detailed article at Ars about that which is a better read than what /. offers (as so often, sadly)
> Carl Sagan wrote a lot about the Oort cloud. It would be nice if we could get first-hand evidence of it
We have two types of first hand evidence. The first are long period comets, which spend at least 90% of their life at Oort Cloud distances. They are Oort cloud objects that just happened to have their orbit perigee shifted by passing stars, molecular clouds, or galactic tides. They get close enough to the Sun to boil off their ice content, which makes them easy to find, but otherwise they are still members of the Oort cloud, because that is where they spend most of their time.
The other are "Scattered Disk Objects" ( http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/t_centaurs.html ), which if you sort on "Q" (max distance from the Sun) you will see there are three that go beyond 2000 AU, the nominal inner edge of the Oort cloud. All were discovered in the past year or so, so they haven't made it to the textbooks yet.
There isn't an actual dividing line between the Scattered Disk and the Oort cloud, the nominal distance of 2000 AU is just a convention. How the Oort cloud objects got out there is by scattering of Solar nebula planetesimals by the larger planets. The Scattered disk is just objects that didn't get scattered quite as far.