In a cosmically historic announcement, NASA says the most distant human made object — the Voyager 1 spacecraft — is in interstellar space, the space between the stars. It actually made the transition about a year ago.
“We made it!” said a smiling Dr. Ed Stone, Voyager’s Project Scientist for over 40 years, speaking at a briefing today. “And we did it while we still had enough power to send back data from this new region of space.”
While there is a bit of an argument on the semantics of whether Voyager 1 is still inside or outside of our Solar System (it is not farther out than the Oort Cloud — it will take 300 more years reach the Oort cloud and the spacecraft is closer to our Sun than any other star) the plasma environment Voyager 1 now travels through has definitely changed from what comes from our Sun to the plasma that is present in the space between stars.
‘Rabbit ears’ who would have thought these ancient type antenna probably never seen used with their counterpart by young Nasa employees have helped deciphered the answers Nasa has been looking for 36 years later. Some times simple is good.
This is cool.
Credit:Nasa/JPL/Caltech
-
You know it's just gonna come back, making demands, threatening all humanity ( n/t)
-
We'll throw whales at it.
-
We'll throw whales at it.
-
For Mankind, I think this is the equivalent of landing and returning men on the Moon.