The Untold Want (Au Revoir, Voyager Post)

It’s Official: Voyager 1 Is Now In Interstellar Space (Universe Today Excerpt)

by Nancy Atkinson on September 12, 2013

 

Voyager 1 spacecraft is in interstellar space, the space between the stars, and has left our Solar System. 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.

There’s also been a recent debate on if Voyager was really in or out of the Solar System – a debate between the latest various science papers and their authors. (More on that later…)

But Stone now says the evidence in clear.

“This conclusion is possible from the space craft’s plasma wave instrument,” Stone said. “The 36-year old probe is now sailing through uncharted waters of a new cosmic sea and it has brought us along for the journey.”

Voyager's 36-year, 13 billion mile journey began in 1977.

Voyager Golden Record -- Interstellar Greetings In 55 Languages (Link)

The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,

Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

-    Walt Whitman

CTA-102 -- The Byrds (Link)

For Jane Roberts, Voyager