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NASA-Feature Voyager 1

Later 41 years traveling through the solar organisation, NASA's Voyager 2 probe has entered interstellar space. That makes information technology the second human being antiquity to leave our home backside to drift between the stars. You might exist thinking this already happened, only that's because the get-go object out of the solar system was the other Voyager. They're both in interstellar infinite now, but they had very different journeys.

Voyager 2 launched on Aug. twenty, 1977, atop a Titan 3E rocket. It was actually the beginning of the Voyager spacecraft to attain space. Voyager 1 launched a few weeks afterward on Sept. fifth. That probe made its way exterior our solar bubble half dozen years ago. The probes themselves are functionally identical, but Voyager 2 took a more roundabout way to the border of the solar system.

NASA aimed Voyager two at the outer planets for what it called the "K Tour." Thank you to a planetary alignment that only happens once every 175 years, Voyager 2 completed flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In the case of the last 2, Voyager remains the merely spacecraft to accept always visited them. Voyager 2 has traveled about eleven billion miles (18 billion kilometers) over the past 41 years and change, and it's still moving at 34,000 mph (54,000 kilometers per hour).

NASA announced Voyager 2'southward go out from the solar system at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in Washington. The official date of its entry into interstellar space was recorded equally Nov. fifth, 2018. That'due south when the probe'southward Plasma Science Substation reported no activity from the solar current of air. At that point, scientists knew it had left the solar organization completely.

The approximate positions of Voyager-ane and 2.

Scientists mostly hold the solar system ends at the edge of the heliosphere, the bubble of infinite influenced by the solar wind and magnetic field. At launch, scientists didn't know how far the heliosphere stretched, but the goal was to make the Voyager probes capable of operating long enough to transmit information back as they left the solar organization. The Voyager squad is now two for two.

Voyager 2 is now out in that location among the stars, and it should withal piece of work for a few more years. Even after it goes dormant, Voyager 2 will remain every bit a testament to human ingenuity. Similar Voyager 1, information technology carries a golden record as a bulletin to anyone who might come up across it in the future. Although, it'll be another 40,000 years until Voyager 2 gets near any other stars.

Now read: NASA Just Fired Voyager ane'due south Thrusters For the First Fourth dimension in 37 Years, Hubble telescope to spotter the Voyagers' paths through interstellar space, and Alien Object 'Oumuamua May Be Smaller Than We Thought