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It will be another giant leap for mankind when NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft becomes the first manmade object to venture past the solar system's edge and into the uncharted territory of interstellar space. But did this giant leap already occur?
New data from the spacecraft indicate that the historic moment of its exit from the solar system might have come and gone two months ago. Scientists are crunching one more set of numbers to find out for sure.
Voyager 1, which left Earth on Sept. 5, 1977, has since sped to a distance of 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion kilometers) from the sun, making it the farthest afield of any manmade object. (It has 2 billion miles on its twin, Voyager 2, which took a longer route through the solar system.) Still phoning home (via radio transmissions) after 35 years, the Voyagers are the longest operating spacecraft in history.
For two years now, data beamed back to Earth by Voyager 1 has hinted at its close approach to the edge of the solar system, a pressure boundary called the heliopause. At this boundary, the bubble of electrically charged particles blowing outward from the sun (called the heliosphere) exactly counterbalances the inward pressure of the gas and dust from interstellar space, causing equilibrium between the two. But scientists have had trouble figuring out what, exactly, happens at or near this boundary — making it hard to tell whether Voyager has crossed it.
In 2010, Voyager passed the point where the solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun, seemed to reach the end of its leash. The probe's detectors indicated that the wind had suddenly died down, and all the surrounding solar particles were at a standstill.
This "stagnation region" came as a surprise. Scientists had expected to see the solar wind veer sideways when it met the heliopause, like water hitting a wall, rather than screech to a halt. As Voyager scientists explained in a paper published last month in Nature, the perplexing collapse of the solar wind at the edge of the heliosphere left them without a working model for the outer solar system.
"There is no well-established criteria of what constitutes exit from the heliosphere," Stamatios Krimigis, a space scientist at Johns Hopkins University and NASA principal investigator in charge of the Voyager spacecraft's Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument, told Life's Little Mysteries. "All theoretical models have been found wanting."
However, Ed Roelof, also a space scientist at Johns Hopkins who works with Voyager 1 data, said that in any model of the heliopause, an object exiting through it should experience three changes: a sharp rise in the number of collisions with cosmic rays (high-energy particles from space), a dramatic drop in the number of collisions with charged particles from the sun, and a change in the direction of the surrounding magnetic field.
For the rest of the article click the above link. So Mars over the summer and finally knocking a man made object out of the summer this fall, what's NASA going to do for an encore this winter?
I beg of you sarge let me lead the charge when the battle lines are drawn
Lemme at least leave a good hoof beat they'll remember loud and long
Well given what was happening two months ago (nothing much just landing on Mars) and the scientists have to go through a pretty serious process to confirm that Voyager's actually exited the Solar system...
I beg of you sarge let me lead the charge when the battle lines are drawn
Lemme at least leave a good hoof beat they'll remember loud and long
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Wait 200 years. We'll get some interesting data when it comes back. . .
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
It only took 35 years or so for it leave the solar system at the speeds it was going. Not too shabby.
I wonder if we will still get interesting data from it?
What will be more interesting is when we strap some ion thrusters to deep space probes and send them off under continuous acceleration... might be able to reach some of the nearest stars in 35 years...
Proxima Centauri is only 4.243 light years away. With modern ion drives it would take ~128 years for a zero:zero intercept... who knows what kind of acceleration we might be able to get from them in a few years.
Southampton, Hampshire, England, British Isles, Europe, Earth, Sol, Sector 001
Until it reaches the Oort cloud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud its still with in our solar system, give it about 200 years then maybe it will have left the Sol post code but not just yet.
We probably would have found out from TLC had it not been overrun with crappy reality shows...
I saw Voyager II on its pass by Neptune and it was cool. I'm still hoping for the message back when it bumps into something out there. I just hope its not the Borg...
Quite a few you all were a wee bit young to remember this coming out
Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
No longer defending the US Military or US Gov't. Just going to ""**feed into your fears**"" with Duffel Blog Did not fight my way up on top the food chain to become a Vegan...
Warning: Stupid Allergy
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend
DE 6700
Harlequin 2500
RIP Muhammad Ali.
Jihadin, Scorched Earth 791. Leader of the Pork Eating Crusader. Alpha
Indeed it is. When a calculator can leave the solar system but I still can't get a piece of toast that's evenly toasted...
/verymuchfirstworldproblems
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
The elephant in the room. Voyager has passed yet another milestone to leaving the solar system, but it will not actually leave in our lifetimes, or any projected lifetime.
d-usa wrote: Amazing that something with the processing power of a calculator can leave the galaxy, but I can't keep my computer from crashing...
Thats a little optimistic of Voyagers capabilities.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Quite a few you all were a wee bit young to remember this coming out
That movie was inspired!
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
