It's Official: Voyager 1 Is an Interstellar Probe 218
astroengine writes "After a 35-year, 11-billion mile journey, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft left the solar system to become the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, new evidence from a team of scientists shows. 'It's kind of like landing on the moon. It's a milestone in history. Like all science, it's exploration. It's new knowledge,' long-time Voyager scientist Donald Gurnett, with the University of Iowa, told Discovery News. The first signs that the spacecraft had left the solar system's heliopause was a sudden drop in solar particles and a corresponding increase in cosmic rays in 2012, but this evidence alone wasn't conclusive. Through indirect means, scientist analyzing oscillations along the probe's 10-meter (33-foot) antennas were able to deduce that Voyager was traveling through a less dense medium — i.e. interstellar space." You can watch NASA's briefing on the probe's progress here.
In vain does the God of War growl (Score:5, Interesting)
"In vain does the God of War growl, snarl, roar, and try to interrupt with bombards, trumpets, and his whole tarantantaran
- Johannes Kepler
Kudos to Harold Lippschitz (Score:5, Interesting)
Seventy four year old Harold Lippschitz, chief proponent and designer of Voyager's antenna oscillation meters, was quoted as saying, "Ha ha! They laughed at me years ago at NASA! I told them, 'You're gonna want those damn oscillation meters, they're important!', but the other guys just rolled their eyes and shook their heads. 'There goes Harold again,' they said. 'Jabbering about his damn little meters.' Well, who's laughing now, motherf***ers? Ha HA!"
Is it strange that this is sort of a tear jerker? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nasa launches this probe, about the same year that I was born, to study Saturn and Jupiter. Everything goes beautifully so it just keeps on flying. On Valentine's day 1990 just as it's about to leave the solar system they spin the camera around to take the "family portrait". Today it exits the solar system(I know for the 12th time or whatever). Now it just wanders off into the darkness while it's reactor runs down and it's systems shut off one at a time. Who knows, in a few billion years when the sun bakes this planet the golden record might be all that's left of us. Kind of like "The Inner Light" episode of Star Trek, but with less flute.
No, it's not (Score:2, Interesting)
No, it's not. It's kind of like landing on the moon only if they claimed they "landed" on the moon 1000km from the surface, and kept reporting that once again they've "landed" on the moon (officially now!) every 5km thereafter.
Re:Depends on definition of interstellar (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the Oort cloud lies beyond the heliopause, and is bound to our sun by gravity, how can we say that Voyager has "really" entered interstellar space? Shouldn't true interstellar space be a distance from the sun where nothing is bound directly to Sol by gravity? Where another star has equal pull on an object? Voyager I is currently far from that point in space.
The claim is that it is in interstellar space: i.e. the interstellar medium that pervades the space between star systems. This has nothing to do with gravitational binding of other distant objects. The Oort Cloud is without question in interstellar space, despite very weak gravitational binding to the sun (solar escape velocity there about 100 mph).
Going by the gravitational binding argument you could claim that all five probes "left the solar system" the instant they achieved solar escape velocity and was no longer bound to the sun.