Data gathered by the Plasma Wave (PWS) instrument on Voyager has now prompted the team to announce the exit occurred on 25 August 2012. Stone has always been very careful not to use the phrase "leave the Solar System", mindful that his spacecraft still has to pass through the Oort cloud where there are comets gravitationally bound to the Sun, albeit very loosely. But in a new domain of space, it certainly is. And it's an extraordinary moment. Read more
Voyager 1 Returns Surprising Data about an Unexplored Region of Deep Space
In a trio of studies published online June 27 in Science, Voyager scientists describe the latest heliospheric wrinkle discovered by the probe en route to interstellar space. Voyager 1, they report, appears to have crossed last August into what is now being called the "heliosheath depletion region." The researchers described some characteristics of the new region in a December 2012 teleconference with reporters, but the new studies go into far more detail about Voyager 1's environs. One major change signalling that Voyager had entered new territory was a sudden decrease in the number of particles from the sun hitting the spacecrafts Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instrument. On August 25, those solar particles dropped to less than one-thousandth their prior levels. Simultaneously, cosmic rays emanating from sources elsewhere in the galaxy began striking the LECP at a rate nearly 10 percent above the previous clip. Read more
"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" - Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist.
The Voyager-1 spacecraft has left the Solar System, the first man-made object to do so. The US space agency (Nasa) reports that Voyager has now entered a realm of space beyond the influence of our Sun. Read more
NASA Voyager 1 Probe Encounters New Region in Deep Space
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space. Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. This connection allows lower-energy charged particles that originate from inside our heliosphere, or the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself, to zoom out and allows higher-energy particles from outside to stream in. Before entering this region, the charged particles bounced around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the heliosphere. Read more
Scientists working on Voyager 1 are receiving further data suggesting the probe is close to crossing into interstellar space. The Nasa mission, which launched from Earth in 1977, could leave our Solar System at any time. Read more
Seventeen and a half billion kilometres from Earth, mankind's most distant probe seems to be on the edge of interstellar space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is at the limit of the 'heliosheath', where particles streaming from the Sun clash with the gases of the galaxy. Contrary to scientists' expectation of a sharp, violent edge, the boundary seems to be a tepid place, where the solar wind mingles with extrasolar particles. Read more
Humankind's most distant emissaries are flying through a turbulent sea of magnetism as they seek to break free of our Solar System. Nasa's Voyager probes, which were launched in 1977, are now approaching the very edge of our Sun's influence, more than 14 billion km from Earth; and they are still returning data. That information has allowed scientists to build a better picture of what conditions are like in the zone where matter blown out from our star pushes up against interstellar space. Read more
Probes Suggest Magnetic Bubbles at Solar System Edge
Observations from NASA's Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest deep space sentinels, suggest the edge of our solar system may not be smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles. While using a new computer model to analyse Voyager data, scientists found the sun's distant magnetic field is made up of bubbles approximately million kilometres wide. The bubbles are created when magnetic field lines reorganize. The new model suggests the field lines are broken up into self-contained structures disconnected from the solar magnetic field. The findings are described in the June 9 edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Like Earth, our sun has a magnetic field with a north pole and a south pole. The field lines are stretched outward by the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the star that interacts with material expelled from others in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy. The Voyager spacecraft, more than 14 billion kilometres away from Earth, are travelling in a boundary region. In that area, the solar wind and magnetic field are affected by material expelled from other stars in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy.