Voyager 1: reports of my exit are greatly exaggerated
- 12:54 05 September 2012 by Victoria Jaggard
It launched 35 years ago today, but
the most distant spacecraft from Earth is stubbornly refusing to leave
home turf. NASA's Voyager 1 has seemed on the verge of exiting our solar
system for years, but new results suggest that it still has a way to go
before it enters interstellar space.
The latest readings from one of the
spacecraft's instruments show that charged particles around Voyager 1
aren't changing direction the way they should at the heliopause, the
boundary between the sun's sphere of influence and the rest of the
galaxy.
This could be a sign that the craft
won't leave the solar system for up to 15 years, by which time it is
expected to have run out of the power needed to communicate with Earth.
The solar system sits in a huge
magnetic bubble. Solar wind containing charged particles flows outwards
from the sun, only to get bent around by the magnetic field, at the
heliopause.
More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22243-voyager-1-reports-of-my-exit-are-greatly-exaggerated.html
Source: New Scientist Magazine.
gaw
Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
Friends of the Zeiss < http://friendsofthezeiss.org >
Electronic Mail - < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
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