After 35 years of travelling through space, NASA’s Voyager 1 made a historical leap out of our solar system, making it the first spacecraft to venture into what is known as interstellar space. Interstellar space refers to the area between giant stars that died millions of years ago. It is a space that is dominated by plasma or ionized gas. Recent data shows that the Voyager is currently in this transitional region right outside of our solar system, which is 19 billion kilometers away from our sun.
Although the Voyager’s plasma sensor has been ineffective since 1980, the massive burst of solar wind and magnetic field from our sun made the plasma around the spacecraft to vibrate, allowing the researchers to understand the density of the plasma. From this incident, scientists are able to determine the vibration of the plasma is 40 times denser than the measurement taken in the outer layer of the heliosphere, which is a sort of bubble of charged particles that surrounds our sun. The change in density indicates a new region in space and the new data matches very well with what the researchers expect to find in interstellar space.
The NASA engineers carefully calculated and managed the Voyager’s resources to ensure that it can still send data back to Earth at least through 2020. The signals emitted from Voyager 1 are weak, at about 23 watts, which is the power of a refrigerator light bulb. Even traveling at the speed of light, it takes about 17 hours for the signals to reach Earth.
Voyager 1 has gone beyond any probe has ever gone, and it is continuing to reach for the undisturbed part of interstellar space, where there is no influence from our sun. Although scientists are not certain whether Voyager 1’s twin, Voyager 2, can cross into interstellar space, they believe it is very close behind.
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