- New and "unexpected" data indicated 36 years after it was launched, Voyager 1 has left the heliosphere, the bubble of hot, energetic charged particles surrounding the solar system, and entered into a region of cold, dark space, known as interstellar space.
- It said the spacecraft arrived in this cold, unexplored interstellar region on or about Aug 25, 2012, and is now about 19 billion km from our Sun.
- "Now
that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap
into interstellar space," Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based
at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement.
- "The
Voyager team needed time to analyse those observations and make sense of
them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we
there yet?' Yes, we are," Stone said.
- The
findings are published in the US journal Science.
- Voyager
1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both
spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and
Neptune.
- Voyager
2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated
spacecraft. It is about 15 billion km away from our Sun.
- Scientists
are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar
space, but they believe it's not very far behind.
