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It's Official: Voyager 1 Is an Interstellar Probe
astroengine writes "After a 35-year, 11-billion mile journey, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft left the solar system to become the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, new evidence from a team of scientists shows. 'It's kind of like landing on the moon. It's a milestone in history. Like all science, it's exploration. It's new knowledge,' long-time Voyager scientist Donald Gurnett, with the University of Iowa, told Discovery News. The first signs that the spacecraft had left the solar system's heliopause was a sudden drop in solar particles and a corresponding increase in cosmic rays in 2012, but this evidence alone wasn't conclusive. Through indirect means, scientist analyzing oscillations along the probe's 10-meter (33-foot) antennas were able to deduce that Voyager was traveling through a less dense medium — i.e. interstellar space." You can watch NASA's briefing on the probe's progress here.
http://xkcd.com/1189/
They use the same math behind the Vista file copying progress bar to judge its distance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Woosh...
The sound of Voyager leaving the solar system..... over your head. :-)
Yeah so awesome. Now try to get your astronauts off the international space station without using a Soyuz capsule. Awesome.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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