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By Tia Ghose
Space.com
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft — the farthest-flung object created by human hands — has traveled beyond the sun's sphere of influence and may even have left the solar system forever, a new study suggests.
On Aug. 25, 2012, 35 years after the Voyager 1 mission launched, Earth's most distant spacecraft detected a sharp change in the intensity of fast-moving charged particles called cosmic rays, suggesting that it had left the outermost reaches of the heliosphere on the edge of the solar system.
"Within just a few days, the heliospheric intensity of trapped radiation decreased, and the cosmic ray intensity went up as you would expect if it exited the heliosphere," Bill Webber, professor emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, said in a statement.
The scientists still don't know for sure, however, whether the probe has entered interstellar space or if it remains in a mysterious in-between region that Voyager team members first discovered a few months ago.
"It's outside the normal heliosphere, I would say that," Webber said. "We're in a new region. And everything we're measuring is different and exciting."
Voyager chief scientist Ed Stone said most mission researchers don't believe the spacecraft has popped free into interstellar space just yet.
"It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space," Stone, a physicist at Caltech in Pasadena, said in a statement. "In December 2012, the Voyager science team reported that Voyager 1 is within a new region called 'the magnetic highway' where energetic particles changed dramatically. A change in the direction of the magnetic field is the last critical indicator of reaching interstellar space, and that change of direction has not yet been observed."
NASA / JPL-Caltech
NASA says the Voyager 1 spacecraft is in a new region between our solar system and interstellar space, which scientists are calling the stagnation region.
Webber and his colleagues noticed the dramatic cosmic ray signal drop when Voyager 1 was about 11 billion miles (17.7 billion kilometers) from the sun. Anomalous cosmic rays trapped in the heliosphere's outer reaches dropped to 1 percent of their previous level. Meanwhile, galactic cosmic rays, which come from outside the solar system, jumped to twice their previous levels, reaching their highest levels since the spacecraft launched, researchers said.
The findings have been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
Voyager 1 was actually the second of NASA's two Voyager spacecraft to launch on historic tours of the solar system. Voyager 2 blasted off on Aug. 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 following a few weeks later on Sept. 5 of that year.
Both spacecraft carry a gold-plated copper disc containing sounds and images of Earth. The golden record is about 12 inches (30 centimeters) across and attached to the hull of each Voyager probe. The records are engraved with a diagram that explains how to play them and where Earth can be found, just in case the Voyager probes are discovered by intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms.
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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Where no man-made object has gone before...
doesn't have quite the same ring
Vger, you are out there buddy.
35 year old US technology without a single oil change !!
Amazing !!
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Amazing? NO DOUBT!!!! I was 16 when these things launched and just knew they would only last 5-10 years or so, boy was I wrong! Incredible testament to the engineers and machinists that built, programed, launched, flew us to amazing new places, gave us views of those worlds that truly changed the course of of robotic exploration and then set them on course to become the first messengers from our planet!
I am sooooo proud to be an American and to have shared in our successes in space!
I make a motion that a constitutional amendment needs to come to fruition that gives NASA guaranteed funding that separates said funding from Congress and the President's greedy paws. NASA should get 3% of the annual federal budget every year, by law, and use that money to take us where the science dictates, not politicians. NASA now receives .5% or less of the Fed's budget, what could they do with 3%?.....well that's what NASA got after Kennedy's declaration and NASA proved their might and put 12 men on the moon within 10 years!
If this amendment were to become reality we would truly become a space faring nation!
I loves my Voyagers!
The accomplishments of the two Voyager craft are just about as important as Apollo's landings on the Moon.
Amazing! (And how wonderful to be alive at this time in history to see these events unfold!)
But I have a lurking fear that we might come to regret the "where Earth can be found" part of the golden record...... Let's hope that's not true!!
What do you think, Michael?
The article might not be entirely true. Huh? For all you physics fans, find a copy of Backyard Ballistics. In addition to plans to construct a spud gun, it gives a remakable story explaining how the U.S. launched an atomic manhole cover that trippled the speed of escape velocity as calculated by Newton. This object has been speeding across the universe since the late 1940's as a result of America's early underground atomic testing in the SW U.S.
The U.S. launched the cover (unintentionally) long before Sputnick and well before Voyager. America may have the distinction of not only having launched the first man made object into space, but beyond our universe.
PIFFLE!
Barring the incredibly unlikely discovery that 'aliens got FTL and they've just been keeping quiet till INVASION DAY!'
evidience suggests it will be thousands of years till Vger 'gets somewhere' and by then we will either
1) gone to collect it for a museum, or
2) be advanced enough technologicly to not care if someone finds it
We couldn't build something like this today if we tried
We have, its called New Horizons, and is the fastest man made spacecraft ever launched. It will fly by Pluto and it's moons in July of 2015 and will one day overtake Voyager 1 as the furthest flung man made spacecraft!
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html
Slight correction Kevin - both Voyager 1 & 2 are moving faster than New Horizons (17.0 km/s & 15.4 km/s, vs 15.1 km/s). New Horizons will always lag behind V1 & V2.
(New Horizons is a GREAT mission none the less!)
Snikt, Spirit and Oportunity were only ment to work for a few month on Mars. Both ended up putting in over 5 YEARS of great work. Not only can we build something like Voyager 1 agian, NASA has done it.
I find it curious that when certain people can't do anything, they always assume that nobody else can either. Never quite figured that out...
This amazes me more than any Space Shuttle or mission to the moon or Mars ever could! Just think, interstellar space! Gone so long, never to return.
@Ray M
And to think that it has been traveling over 37,000 MPH for 35 years! Like you said, when it gets to interstellar space, it is gone forever and Space is so big that it will not hit anything in the Milky Way Galaxy!
Sail on grand voyager.
Whatever happens to Mankind, for better or worse in the ever flowing passage of Eternity, this small monument to Man's yearning to reach for the stars, will valiantly soar on faithfully.Voyager 1, silent witness to this Universe of a planet where creatures with a bold dream dared to make it real.
Not according to NASA...
They certainly got their money's worth out of those probes, especially since they are still transmitting data. It might outlast the civilization that created it.
They certainly got their money's worth out of those probes, especially since they are still transmitting data. It might outlast the civilization that created it.
So, if an alien finds one of the 12 inch LP records, and is smart enough to read, and how to play it, then they will know something about us, and know where to find us. But that doesn't mean they could be smart enough to actually have the technology to come into our Galaxy, and have dinner with us. Or have us for dinner. Who knows, we may or may not ever know what is really out there, in the universe.
If aliens ever do find it they will be from our Galaxy! Voyager does not have the energy or the speed to exit the Milky Way Galaxy, only our little solar system!
Good luck in Voyager reaching any Solar System any time soon. A probe traveling 186,000 MPH would take 180,000 years to get to a star system 50 light years away. Voyager is traveling a lot slower then that.
They're kind of like messages in bottles. Some one might find one of them someday?
I wouldn't be surprised if an expedition from the Smithsonian won't go out in 200 years or so to intercept the Voyagers, and bring them back to a place of pride in the Air & Space Museum.
The nearest star, Alpha Centauri (a binary system) is just a tiny (as astronomical distances go) 4.37 light years away (25.8 trillion miles). There was a conceptual design (Project Longshot -- see Wikipedia), done at the US Navel Academy around 1987, that would take 100 years to get there at around 30 million mph.
Well actually the next nearest star is Alpha Centauri, because our own sun is the nearest...hehehe
Money much better spent than *any* manned mission.