NASA's Voyager 2 Probe Enters Interstellar Space

For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars. NASA's Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun.

Members of NASA's Voyager team will discuss the findings at a news conference at 11 a.m. EST (8 a.m. PST) today at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington. The news conference will stream live on the agency's website.

Comparing data from different instruments aboard the trailblazing spacecraft, mission scientists determined the probe crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere on Nov. 5. This boundary, called the heliopause, is where the tenuous, hot solar wind meets the cold, dense interstellar medium. Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.

phys.org, December 10, 2018 - NASA's Voyager 2 probe enters interstellar space.

While we were dreaming of turkey Voyager crossed the threshold into interplanetary space! The announcement happened today but the heliopause was crossed in the first week of November. Beside 'Oumama (teehee!) and possibly four other objects just discovered, this is the second man-made (and women too!) object to escape our solar system.

This has been happening all while I grew up! It is pretty amazing if you stop and think about it. We had satellite downlinks up in college when Galileo passed Jupiter and its moons. All these years later, now Voyager 2 has left the solar system.

Science is pretty awesome!

It is pretty awesome.

I think we should be sending out more modern probes every 10 years or so.

Will be interesting to see what information they learn.

a reply to: watchitburn

With more naked pics of ourselves??!!

LOL!

Faster, better probes, that can remake themselves all Transformer-like! We can send one as fast as we can, into the black hole at the center of the galaxy. Pwned that! Pew-pew!!

eggnog!

ETA: Seriously, more space probes because it is vast and we are so small! A little humility never hurt anybody.

It's too bad those probes are lost and stranded in space once they've lost signals from Earth.
We should be sending up communication satellites into orbits around distant bodies just to extend our reach in the solar system.

It's cool that we can send something that far away from us but at the same time it's a shame we can't see it.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

She now joins her sister out in the big bad Galaxy , I do worry for them but they've got to find their own adventures now.


Wonder what ET will make of that .... probably a hat.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: watchitburn

With more naked pics of ourselves??!!

LOL!

Faster, better probes, that can remake themselves all Transformer-like! We can send one as fast as we can, into the black hole at the center of the galaxy. Pwned that! Pew-pew!!

eggnog!

ETA: Seriously, more space probes because it is vast and we are so small! A little humility never hurt anybody.

I'll volunteer to send the first dick pic to interstellar beings!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Sending these out into the unknown pointing out where we are is the dumbest thing ever .

i remember watching the launch of the V1 and V2 when i was a kid when Carl Sagan was alive, anyone remeber Cosmos or am i the only old guy here

a reply to: Dr UAE

I remember the journeys in his spaceship of the imagination , I watched in awe as a kid.

Impressively, communication is still possible with both spacecraft which transmit with only 23 watts (7.6 times the power of a typical cell phone (kind of)) and a one way trip of nearly 22 billion kilometers (Voyager 1). That's a one way trip for radio waves of over 20 hours.

a reply to: Gargoyle91


Too late. Just think, our TV waves have been beamed out since 1945. Single Female Lawyer has been off the air for a decade (much to Lur's consternation).

Btw, they already know we are here. A hunk of radioactive metal ain't gonna mean much. What we should do is go retrieve all of the probes we evah sent to go all dark thirty on the universe. That would be a feat for mankind! And a super Ninja move!

Right now we are very trusting. If there are bad aliens out there, we are street grease. So trusting it is! And those probes (and a car) are floating around up there. We need to get up there too! If we could just make a fusion reactor then we would be travelling between the stars ourselves! I am very positive on that thought. It will be sooner than people realize.

To infinity and beyond!

Yeah I hear ya. We should be a bit more discrete and cautious. Then again, humans will be humans!

a reply to: Dr UAE

We were celebrating Pete Shelley the other day... we are all showing our age! I used to watch Cosmos all the time!

That is also what I meant by this happening throughout my life time! It goes to show how vast the universe is! And how little we are on that scale.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Source: phys.org article

That is a pretty decent graphic for those needing a bit of orientation.

Here is the video from the article. The Deep Space Network is pretty amazing too!

They are still working after all those years. The new junk they make would have been fried within ten or twelve years.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

With more naked pics of ourselves??!!

And a compilation tape and directions to our house... put your keys in the bowl upon arrival.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Great thread, but to ruin your day (and mine) we will not be around when either 1 or 2 now meet the next worthwhile area of space, I am sure you are aware (no sarcasm, you know way more than me), are you sitting down

Now that NASA's Voyager 1 probe has left the solar system, its next big spaceflight milestone comes with the flyby of another star — in 40,000 years.

Interstellar Traveler

wonder if this website will still be running

a reply to: UpIsNowDown


I will have given up the ghost by then and be on the next part of my journey.

They say 4% of the power is used each year which is why they powered off a bunch of systems. Their fuel source will have run out by then too. That is a long time to travel to the stars! It already takes 20 hours to "talk" one way.

It would be a fun ride to watch the sun recede! Catching cosmic rays. Sipping Singapore Slings...

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

It is nice to know that we have began our adventure, no matter how long it takes, maybe in our lifetime something will fly this way

in the words of the greatest space adventurer

To infinity and beyond........

originally posted by: Gargoyle91
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Sending these out into the unknown pointing out where we are is the dumbest thing ever .

Odds are by the time they're ever discovered, we'll have either gone extinct or left this planet.

They really should watch their phrasing. While it's true they're in interstellar space, they're still inside our solar system.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: Gargoyle91


Too late. Just think, our TV waves have been beamed out since 1945.

This is something that's often brought up, but realistically doesn't mean much. The signal degrades as it expands out into space. Even at the closest star, if you had a receiver, the signal would be too weak for you to pick up any of our television or radio shows at that distance. It's possible an advanced civilization may have the technology to recover the signal, but they'd also have to be looking for it.

now what? do we never here anything again? did they lose communication?

what happened what did they find?

Until recently, the space surrounding Voyager 2 was filled predominantly with plasma flowing out from our Sun. Read more at: phys.org...

I find this to be interesting, wonder what the electric universe proponents think of this?