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This NASA diagram illustrates the assumed positions of travelers 1 and 2 in the solar system in October 2018. Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in 2012. The Voyager 2 satellite is expected to soon achieve this goal.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Want to go? You want to go far, far? Voyager 2 has the wind in its sails: the spacecraft, launched in 1977, is approaching the edge of the solar system, according to a NASA statement released today (October 5).
This announcement is based on two different instruments on board which, at the end of August, began to notice a slight rise in the number of cosmic rays – ultrafast particles striking the solar system of outer space – reaching the probe . This is pretty much consistent with what Voyager 1 started to experience about three months before its big departure in 2012, but scientists can only be certain of this milestone after its adoption.
"We are witnessing a change in the environment around Voyager 2, no doubt," said Ed Stone, scientist at the Voyager project, a physicist at Caltech. "We will learn a lot in the months to come, but we still do not know when we will hit the heliopause – we are not there yet – that is one thing I can say with confidence. " [Voyager at 40: 40 Photos from NASA’s Epic ‘Grand Tour’ Mission]
The team behind Voyager 2 knows that the spacecraft is currently about 17.7 billion kilometers from Earth. But it is difficult to predict when the satellite will leave the solar system through what scientists call the heliopause.
The heliopause is the bubble around our solar system formed by the solar wind, the flow of charged particles that constantly flows from our sun. But this solar wind fluctuates over the eleven-year solar cycle, which means that the bubble of our solar system itself is expanding and contracting.
And because Voyager 2 does not exactly follow the steps of its predecessor, scientists are not sure that its cosmic output will cause identical changes in the data reported by the probe. So, as long as Voyager 2 has not gone through the heliopause, there is no way to know exactly where it is with regard to the heliopause.
When he manages to escape the solar system, Voyager 2 will become the second human-made object to do so.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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