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By William Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA's Voyager 2 satellite, launched in 1977 for a five-year mission, has become the second man-made spacecraft to continue its journey to billions of kilometers of Earth, have Wednesday announced scientists. .
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NASA said the data collected by the equipment aboard the spacecraft showed that it had crossed the outer edge of the solar atmosphere, a protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields around the sun, before November 5th.
The image of the probe over more than 18 billion kilometers is the region where the hot solar wind collides with interstellar space.
"It's a very exciting time for Voyager, who began exploring the planets 41 years ago, and the atmosphere of the sun and interstellar space is coming in," said Ed Stone, co-author of the Voyager project. based at the California Institute of Technology.
Voyager 2 was launched in 1977, 16 days before the launch of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, where the probe mission was to last five years to study the large Jupiter and Saturn gas turbines. Their continuous work allowed the probe to study the orbits of Uranus and Neptune as two giant planets of the solar system.
Both probes carry a sound recording on a gold-plated copper disc containing sounds, images and welcome expressions in multiple languages illustrating the diversity of life and culture in order to communicate with potential space objects that both probes could meet.
The two probes are not yet officially released from the solar system.
(Reuters)
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