Voyager 1’s Interstellar Journey Confirmed

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After much back and forth, a new study seems to have determined once and for all that Voyager 1 is in interstellar space.

“We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data — they showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble,” Gurnett said. “Clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma.”

The new plasma data suggested a timeframe consistent with abrupt, durable changes in the density of energetic particles that were first detected on Aug. 25, 2012. The Voyager team generally accepts this date as the date of interstellar arrival. The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause.

Read all the details here.

Image Caption: Artist’s conception of Voyager 1 in interstellar space (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech).