Voyager 1 embarks on historic journey into interstellar space

September 13, 2013

NASA‘s Voyager 1 spacecraft is now officially the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.

New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars.

Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident.

“Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind’s historic leap into interstellar space,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

“The Voyager team needed time to analyze 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.”

Voyager 1 first detected the increased pressure of interstellar space on the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles surrounding the sun that reaches far beyond the outer planets, in 2004.

Scientists then ramped up their search for evidence of the spacecraft’s interstellar arrival, knowing the data analysis and interpretation could take months or years.

NASA placed a kind of time capsule on Voyager 1 and 2-intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record — a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. (Credit: NASA JPL)

Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our sun. They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind.


For a sound file of the oscillations detected by Voyager in interstellar space, animations and other information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/interstellarvoyager/.

For an image of the radio signal from Voyager 1 on Feb. 21 by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array, which links telescopes from Hawaii to St. Croix, visit: http://www.nrao.edu/.


Source: http://www.kurzweilai.net/voyager-1-embarks-on-historic-journey-into-interstellar-space

Mars rover Opportunity working at 'Matijevic Hill' site

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, well into its 9th year on Mars, will work for the next several weeks or months at a site with some of the mission's most intriguing geological features.

Rock fins up to about 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall dominate 
this scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration 
Rover Opportunity. 
The component images were taken during the 3,058th Martian day, 
or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars (Aug. 23, 2012). 
The view spans an area of terrain about 30 feet (9 meters) wide. 
Orbital investigation of the area has identified a possibility of clay minerals
in this area of the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. 
The view combines exposures taken through Pancam filters centered on 
wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green)
and 432 nanometers (violet). 
It is presented in approximate true color, the camera team's best estimate
of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it 
with their own eyes. 
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

The site, called "Matijevic Hill," overlooks 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater. Opportunity has begun investigating the site's concentration of small spherical objects reminiscent of, but different from, the iron-rich spheres nicknamed "blueberries" at the rover's landing site nearly 22 driving miles ago (35 kilometers).

The small spheres at Matijevic Hill have different composition and internal structure. Opportunity's science team is evaluating a range of possibilities for how they formed. The spheres are up to about an eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter.

Read more: http://goo.gl/7HmRM

Provided by JPL/NASA through the Phys.org