Thirty - five years ago today , NASA launch its Voyager 1 spacecraft on a mission to photograph Jupiter and Saturn at unprecedented grade of detail . On November 16 , 1980 , the ballistic capsule captured the photograph of Saturn you see up top . Four days later , its primary commission was over .
But Voyager 1 had another mission , one that continues to this Clarence Shepard Day Jr. : to explore the outer reach of the solar system . In 35 twelvemonth , Voyager has put a staggering 11 billion miles between itself and the Sun , soar through outer space at speeds approaching 11 mile per second . Today , it is“dancing on the edge ” of out blank as it prepares to record what astronomers call the interstellar mass medium — but what is this region of space , exactly , where is it , and how do astronomers cognise we ’re so close ?
Before we call where Voyager 1 is heading ( the interstellar medium , or ISM for short ) , rent ’s rapidly survey where it ’s been . Since launch from Earth three and a half decades ago , Voyager 1 has been hightail it through a bubble of quad known as the heliosphere , a region of the solar scheme dominated by flow of solar fart — charged , subatomic particles that are given off by the Lord’s Day :
As the diagram above illustrates , the ISM is what lies beyond the cosmic bubble of solar fart that surrounds our sun . Now remember that Alpha Centauri , the star system nearest our own , resides over four loose age from Earth — that ’s a aloofness thousands of time greater than the one Voyager has traveled in the last 35 class . The ISM is the affair that makes up the regions of space interspersed between the coltsfoot ’s disperse star systems .
“ Voyager differentiate us now that we ’re in a doldrums region in the outmost bed of the bubble around our solar system , ” explicate Ed Stone , Voyager project scientist , last December , when the spacecraft start show up signs it was nearing its interstellar destination . “ [ It ’s ] show up that what is outside is pushing back . We should n’t have prospicient to wait to find out what the distance between stars is really like . ”
The far from the sun Voyager catch , the less solar idle words it have , earmark in high spirits - energy electrons from the ISM to leak into the heliosphere and “ push back , ” as Stone put it , on the Sun ’s solar farting . Using Voyager 1 ’s low - zip commit particle instrument as a kind of drogue for subatomic particles , NASA can get a feel for how the cosmic pushover are blow at the spacecraft ’s current position . The point where pressure from the solar tip and the interstellar intermediate symmetry is known as the the heliopause . you could think of the heliopause as the cosmic signpost demarcating where our solar organization terminate , and interstellar space commence .
So how long until Voyager 1 burst away from the heliosphere and into the ISM for good ? Back in December , Voyager ’s “ windsock ” suggested that for the first time , the ISM ’s malarky was suck back , a augury that it was traversing never - before - encounter cosmic territory . Months later , NASAreported another surgein strength from the ISM ’s charged particles . Since then , reading have fluctuated , but the general consensus among NASA scientist seems to be that the day when the first human - made target enters interstellar space is tight approaching .
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-says-the-voyager-1-spacecraft-has-entered-into-an-5918707
“ The question is , how much further is it to the heliopause ? ” Stone askedat a lecture , delivered yesterday at JPL . “ We do n’t know , ” he continued , noting that Voyager 1 travels about a billion mile every three years . “ I ca n’t tell you if it ’s days , calendar month or age , ” he explained , but “ it ’s hard to imagine that it ’s go to be too much longer . ”
In the days ( or month , or years ) out front , NASA will wait to get Christian Bible from Voyager 1 that there has been a major duty period in the direction of the magnetic field lines that surround it . That , mark Stone and his colleagues , will be the clearest indication that the space vehicle has “ go forth the bubble ” of our solar system , and enter the uncharted range of the Milky Way ’s vast interstellar medium .
HeliosphereNASAScienceSpaceVoyager 1
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