http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/03/us/space-voyager-solar-system/index.html?hpt=hp_c3


An artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft, which is now about 11 billion miles from the sun, NASA said.

Are we there yet? If you're Voyager 1 and you're looking for a spot beyond the end of our solar system, the answer is no.
 
NASA officials have been saying for months that Voyager 1 is almost there when it comes to interstellar space as it continues the longest road trip in the history of mankind.
 
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 took off 16 days apart in 1977, and Voyager 1 is now about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun.
 
On Monday, project officials said new information sent back from the ship yielded a surprising result.
 
"If we would have only looked at particle data alone, we would have said we're out of the solar system," said Tom Krimigis, a scientist from Johns Hopkins University who examines data on low-energy charged particles. "But nature is very imaginative, and Lucy pulled up the football again."
 
The Voyager team believes this region is where lines of magnetic particles from the solar system are meeting particles from interstellar space.
 
Because the direction of the magnetic lines is unchanged, the project members count this as part of the solar system. When the direction changes, Voyager 1 will finally be in interstellar space.
 
"We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space," said project member Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology. "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."
 
The spacecraft entered the new region in July, fueling predictions it was getting close to the edge of the solar system.
 
Voyager 2, which is on a different flight path, is a few billion miles closer to the sun.

Not my Voyager XII, though.

Not my Voyager XII, though.

Maybe it needs to be launched into space?

I'm not sure it couldn't go fast enough to escape Earth's gravity...the C14 on the other hand, could (but only the 08 model).  The other colors aren't fast enough.

But the battery will shoot craps.

How is that thing still functioning? Now that's engineering!

It's amazing. NASA needs to take some lessons from the Voyager crew!

Simply amazing.  Sometimes we just get things right.  Voyagers, moon landings, B-52s, SR-71, and other amazing engineering feats that just go and go.  Look at the Mars rover that has been going for several years, was only supposed to last a couple of months.

Then again, I've been going for 57 years, which is a lot longer than anyone expected.

Voyager 2 has left the building!

http://spaceweather.com/

Voyager 2 has exited the sun's magnetic bubble and entered interstellar space. Mission scientists announced the breakthrough earlier today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington DC. Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed the same boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2's crossing is arguably more significant because it carries a working instrument that can sense interstellar plasmas, providing the first in situ sampling of matter between the stars.

The most compelling evidence of Voyager 2's exit from the heliosphere came from its onboard Plasma Science Experiment (PLS), an instrument that stopped working on Voyager 1 in 1980. Until recently, Voyager 2 was surrounded mainly by the solar wind--a type of plasma flowing outward from the sun. On Nov. 5th, Voyager 2's plasma instrument observed a sharp decline in the solar wind, and since that date, it has observed no solar wind flow--a clear sign that the probe has left the heliosphere.

Replacing the solar wind is a blizzard of galactic cosmic rays. The sun's magnetic field substantially protects the solar system from cosmic rays, fending off the high energy debris of supernova explosions in the Milky Way and elsewhere. Now that Voyager 2 has exited that protective shell, it is baldly exposed to cosmic rays, and its cosmic ray subsystem is registering a surge.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 now is slightly more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth. Mission operators still can communicate with Voyager 2 as it enters this new phase of its journey, but information – moving at the speed of light – takes about 16.5 hours to travel from the spacecraft to Earth.

The Voyager probes are powered using heat from the decay of radioactive material, contained in a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG). The power output of the RTGs diminishes by about four watts per year, which means that various parts of the Voyagers, including the cameras on both spacecraft, have been turned off over time to manage power. Thanks to these precautions, the Voyagers could continue to send back at least some data for years to come.

"There is still a lot to learn about the region of interstellar space immediately beyond the heliosphere," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

All is well with the world now..    Hopefully they won't run into that wall that surrounds our solar system as they won't have enough time to brake.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6062617/Nasas-New-Horizons-spacecraft-spotted-hydrogen-wall-Solar-System.html

Do you think the engineers that built it ever imagined that it would still be communicating 41 years after launch?

So when do we get to call it V'ger? (or V'Ger, if you prefer)




...so, Voyager II was launched 16 days before Voyager I? 
Must be remnants of the failed "New Math" from the 60's still in our space program in the 70s.

All is well with the world now..    Hopefully they won't run into that wall that surrounds our solar system as they won't have enough time to brake.

Does that wall keep aliens out?

Doesn't appear so based on numerous sightings throughout our history.

Must have left that big beautiful door open.

Does that wall keep aliens out?

I think that they're still debating the funding for said wall. I hear that there might be a solar system shut down...

So when do we get to call it V'ger? (or V'Ger, if you prefer)




...so, Voyager II was launched 16 days before Voyager I? 
Must be remnants of the failed "New Math" from the 60's still in our space program in the 70s.

We'll call it V'ger on it's return trip.

I think that they're still debating the funding for said wall. I hear that there might be a solar system shut down...

 

One of the Earth's longest-flying spacecraft has detected a "persistent hum" beyond our solar system, according to a new study.

NASA's Voyager 1 launched on September 5 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket, just weeks after its sister craft, Voyager 2. Although they were initially designed to last five years, more than 43 years after they launched, the crafts are still sending back data as they explore interstellar space.

Instruments aboard Voyager 1, which has moved past the edge of the solar system, through the solar system's border with interstellar space, known as the heliopause, and into the interstellar medium, have detected the sounds of plasma waves, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

A Cornell University-led team studied data transmitted from the spacecraft, sent from 14 billion miles away and discovered the interstellar gas emissions.

"It's very faint and monotone, because it is in a narrow frequency bandwidth," Stella Koch Ocker, a Cornell University doctoral student in astronomy, said in a statement. "We're detecting the faint, persistent hum of interstellar gas."

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by Jupiter in 1979, and by Saturn in 1980, before crossing the heliopause in August 2012.

After entering interstellar space, Voyager 1's Plasma Wave System instrument detected oscillations in the gas, which is caused by our sun. But researchers also noticed that in between those eruptions, there was a steady and persistent signature.

"The interstellar medium is like a quiet or gentle rain," James Cordes, the George Feldstein Professor of Astronomy at Cornell and senior author of the study, said in a statement.

"In the case of a solar outburst, it's like detecting a lightning burst in a thunderstorm and then it's back to a gentle rain."

Researchers think there is more low-level activity in the interstellar gas than was previously believed. This will allow researchers to monitor the spatial distribution of plasma. Voyager 1's data can also help scientists understand the interactions between the interstellar medium and the sun's solar wind, a steady stream of charged particles outflowing from our star.

"We've never had a chance to evaluate it. Now we know we don't need a fortuitous event related to the sun to measure interstellar plasma," Cornell research scientist Shami Chatterjee added.
"Regardless of what the sun is doing, Voyager is sending back detail," Chatterjee said.

Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in space and continues to function, despite its age and distance.

"Scientifically, this research is quite a feat. It's a testament to the amazing Voyager spacecraft," Ocker said. "It's the engineering gift to science that keeps on giving."