Far Out!

Voyager 1 has left the building.

Or rather, the heliosphere surrounding our solar system.

I first wrote about Voyager 1's travels this time last year, when NASA scientists speculated that the venerable old spacecraft was on the verge of passing beyond the heliosphere. Today comes the official news that yes, indeed, Voyager is going where no man has gone before:

The debate is over. The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered the uncharted territory of interstellar space.

A team led by Don Gurnett, a space physicist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, reports compelling evidence that Voyager has exited the heliosphere, the Solar System’s protective bubble of charged particles. The findings, published online today in Science1, settle an argument that has raged among members of the Voyager team for more than a year.

“This is a milestone,” says Ed Stone, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who has been the project scientist for the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft since 1972, five years before their launch. Voyager 1’s entry into interstellar space “ranks with circumnavigating the globe and the first steps on the Moon,” says Stone, who was not involved in the latest study.

Forgive me, but I simply cannot help but to find this, fascinating.