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Mars Base

Voyager 1 Spacecraft Nearing Solar System's Edge | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/yager-1-solar-system-edge.html

scibyte58 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 08 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers are eyeing three key parameters for signs that Voyager 1, which launched in 1977, has escaped into interstellar space
  • two of these three parameters are now changing faster than at any other time in the last seven years
  • a single day (July 28), the probe measured a 5-percent jump in the level of high-energy cosmic rays coming from outside our solar system, researchers
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The last 5-percent increase Voyager 1 observed took place over a full week in May
  • Three days later, however, both measurements had returned to near their previous levels
Mars Base

Did NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft Just Exit the Solar System? | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/r-spacecraft-solar-system.html

scibyte66 scibyte67 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists are crunching one more set of numbers to find out for sure.
  • New data from the spacecraft indicate that the historic moment of its exit from the solar system might have come and gone two months ago
  • For two years now, data beamed back to Earth by Voyager 1 has hinted at its close approach to the edge of the solar system, a pressure boundary called the heliopaus
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • bubble of electrically charged particles blowing outward from the sun (called the heliosphere) exactly counterbalances the inward pressure of the gas and dust from interstellar space, causing equilibrium between the two
  • scientists have had trouble figuring out what, exactly, happens at or near this boundary — making it hard to tell whether Voyager has crossed it
  • In 2010, Voyager passed the point where the solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun, seemed to
  • indicated that the wind had suddenly died down, and all the surrounding solar particles were at a standstill
  • "stagnation region" came as a surprise
  • expected to see the solar wind veer sideways
  • the perplexing collapse of the solar wind at the edge of the heliosphere left them without a working model for the outer solar system
  • no well-established criteria of what constitutes exit from the heliosphere
  • "All theoretical models have been found wanting."
  • a space scientist at Johns Hopkins who works with Voyager 1 data, said that in any model of the heliopause, an object exiting through it should experience three changes: a sharp rise in the number of collisions with cosmic rays (high-energy particles from space), a dramatic drop in the number of collisions with charged particles from the sun, and a change in the direction of the surrounding magnetic field.
  • Based on two of those criteria, Voyager 1 looks as if it passed through the heliopause at the end of the summer
  • The level of these cosmic ray collisions jumped significantly in late August.
  • spacecraft has experienced a steady rise in the number of collisions with particles whose energies are greater than 70 Mega-electron-volts, indicating they are probably cosmic rays emanating from supernova explosions far beyond the solar system
  • in late August, cosmic ray collisions sharply rose, and solar particle collisions sharply fell: two indicators of a transition through the heliopause
  • To officially declare Voyager's crossing, the scientists need to check if the third condition holds
  • change in magnetic field direction
  • e interstellar field beyond the influence of the sun) is critical because, even though there is debate among astrophysicists as to what direction the field will lie in
  • unlikely that it is the direction that we have been seeing at Voyager 1 throughout the most recent years
  • scientists could not say when the magnetic field analysis would be finished. But when it is
  • Once we have a consensus within the team we will inform NASA for a proper announcement,
Mars Base

Voyager 1 encounters new region in deep space, NASA says - 0 views

phys.org/...ounters-region-deep-space.html

scibyte73 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 04 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region
  • that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space
  • Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • infers this region is still inside our solar bubble because the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed
  • data from two onboard instruments that measure charged particles showed the spacecraft first entered this magnetic highway region on July 28, 2012
  • We are in a magnetic region unlike any we've been in before—about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock—but the magnetic field data show no indication we're in interstellar space
  • The magnetic field data turned out to be the key to pinpointing when we crossed the termination shock. And we expect these data will tell us when we first reach interstellar space."
Mars Base

Voyager 1 may have left the solar system - 0 views

phys.org/...012-10-voyager-left-solar.html

scibyte67 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • there's no official word from NASA
  • the buzz
  • is that Voyager 1 has left the Solar System
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • evidence comes from this graph, above, which shows the number of particles, mainly protons, from the Sun hitting Voyager 1 across time
  • uge drop at the end of August hints that Voyager 1 may now be in interstellar space
  • on July 28, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our Solar System dropped by half. However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels. But then the bottom dropped out at the end of August.
  • Voyager team has said they have been seeing two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space
  • drop in particles from the Sun
  • third key sign would be the direction of the magnetic field
  • jump in the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our Solar System.
  • No word on that yet, but scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction
  • Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space.
  • Voyager project scientist for the entire mission, who was quoted in early August. "We are certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly. But we are not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space."
  • the data are changing in ways that the team didn't expect, "but Voyager has always surprised us with new discoveries."
  • Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is approximately 18 billion kilometers (11 billion miles) from the Sun
  • Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 15 billion km (9.3 billion miles) from the Sun.
Mars Base

NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft May Not Be Near Edge of Solar System After All | Observatio... - 0 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...edge-of-solar-system-after-all

scibyte62 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 06 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Nearly eight years ago, the spacecraft crossed into the heliosheath, the outer region of the solar system where the solar wind (plasma from the sun) begins to slow due to pushback from interstellar plasma
  • in 2010, the velocity of the solar wind at Voyager 1’s back unexpectedly dropped all the way to zero
  • Researchers expected that
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • No one knows the thickness of the heliosheath, so no one knows how soon Voyager 1 might reach its outer edg
  • “Whether these very new data are another feature of the broad transition region that Voyager 1 has been in for the past two years, or a new region or boundary of the heliosphere, remains to be seen.”
Mars Base

NASA - Signs Changing Fast for Voyager at Solar System Edge - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...voyager20120803.html

scibyte58 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 08 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction
  • Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space
  • preliminary analysis of the latest magnetic field data is expected to be available in the next month
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The increase and the decrease are sharper than we've seen before, but that's also what we said about the May data
  • Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 9.3 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun.
Mars Base

Data From NASA's Voyager 1 Point to Interstellar Future - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...news.cfm

scibyte51 voyager Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 15 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased
  • draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion - that humanity's first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system
  • someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly
  • data making the 16-hour-38 minute, 11.1-billion-mile (17.8-billion-kilometer), journey from Voyager 1 to antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth
  • These energetic particles were generated when stars in our cosmic neighborhood went supernova.
  • From January 2009 to January 2012, there had been a gradual increase of about 25 percent in the amount of galactic cosmic rays
  • Beginning on May 7, the cosmic ray hits have increased five percent in a week and nine percent in a month
  • The second important measure
  • is the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself
  • there has been a slow decline in the measurements of these energetic particles, they have not dropped off
  • could be expected when Voyager breaks through the solar boundary.
  • The final data set that Voyager scientists believe will reveal a major change is the measurement in the direction of the magnetic field lines surrounding the spacecraft
  • While Voyager is still within the heliosphere, these field lines run east-west. When it passes into interstellar space, the team expects Voyager will find that the magnetic field lines orient in a more north-south direction
  • Such analysis will take weeks
  • Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is more than 9.1 billion miles (14.7 billion kilometers) away from the sun
Mars Base

Voyager 1 Entering Interstellar Space - Space News - redOrbit - 1 views

www.redorbit.com/...-1-entering-interstellar-space

scibyte51 voyager Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 16 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • now roughly 11 billion miles away and traveling at 6 miles per second
Mars Base

NASA - NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...voyager20111205.html

scibyte51 Voyager1 voyager

shared by Mars Base on 17 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field has piled up, and higher-energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space.
  • Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun
  • The data do not reveal exactly when Voyager 1 will make it past the edge of the solar atmosphere into interstellar space, but suggest it will be in a few months to a few years.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • During this past year, Voyager's magnetometer also detected a doubling in the intensity of the magnetic field
  • Like cars piling up at a clogged freeway off-ramp, the increased intensity of the magnetic field shows that inward pressure from interstellar space is compacting it.
  • Voyager has detected a 100-fold increase in the intensity of high-energy electrons from elsewhere in the galaxy diffusing into our solar system from outside, which is another indication of the approaching boundary.
Mars Base

At last, Voyager 1 slips into interstellar space | Atom & Cosmos | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/..._slips_into_interstellar_space

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • the probe is surrounded by a relatively dense fog of galactic particles rather than a thin mist of solar ones
  • from the beginning
  • team hoped the probes would survive long enough to investigate the region of space where our star’s dominance finally wanes
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • more than 60,000 kilometers per hour
  • August 25, when solar particles disappeared for good
  • combined with a surge in higher-energy particles from other stars, suggested that Voyager had exited the heliosphere
  • Several well-publicized studies made that claim
  • colleagues resisted that conclusion
  • lacked evidence of what they thought would be the key signature of interstellar space: a shift in the direction of the magnetic field
  • Solar plasma produces a distinctive magnetic field because it all comes from the same source
  • scientists expected that the field would shift in interstellar space, where particles flit around in all directions
  • Not everyone agrees, including a few holdouts on the Voyager team
  • have written a paper demonstrating how plasma could become dense enough within the heliosphere to produce
  • measurement
  • many other astrophysicists say the evidence is overwhelming that Voyager 1 has crossed the heliopause, but they acknowledge that they have to determine why the magnetic field direction didn’t shift
  • NASA estimates that Voyager 1 has enough plutonium fuel to keep all its instruments powered for another seven years
  • August 25, 2012 — the same date, coincidentally, that the world lost its most famous human space explorer, Neil Armstrong
Mars Base

Voyager 1 Probe Captures 1st-Ever Sounds of Interstellar Space (Video) | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/tellar-space-sounds-video.html

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  •  Voyager 1 recording of the sound of interstellar space,
  • The sounds are produced by the vibration of dense plasma, or ionized gas; they were captured by the probe's plasma wave instrument
Mars Base

It's Official: Voyager 1 Is Now In Interstellar Space - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...1-is-now-in-interstellar-space

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • NASA says the most distant human made object — the Voyager 1 spacecraft — is in interstellar space
  • It actually made the transition about a year ago
  • there is a bit of an argument on the semantics of whether Voyager 1 is still inside or outside of our Solar System
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • debate
  • There’s also been a
  • between the latest various science papers and their authors
  • Scientists thought that when the spacecraft had crossed over into interstellar space, the magnetic field direction would change
  • that didn’t happen
  • scientists determined they needed to look at the properties of the plasma instead
  • The Sun’s heliosphere is filled with ionized plasma from the Sun
  • Outside that bubble, the plasma comes from the explosions of other stars millions of years ago
  • The main tell-tail difference is the interstellar plasma is denser.
  • the real instrument that was designed to make the measurements on the plasma quit working in the 1980’s
  • Instead they used the plasma wave instrument, located on the 10-meter long antennas on Voyager 1 and
  • from the Sun
  • a massive Coronal Mass Ejection
  • The antennas have radio receivers at the ends – “like the rabbit ears on old television sets
  • The CME erupted from the Sun in March 2012, and eventually arrived at Voyager 1′s location 13 months later, in April 2013
  • Because of the CME, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string
  • The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma
  • the particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere
  • The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012 from other CMEs
  • extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012
  • certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly
  • not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space
  • the data are changing in ways that the team didn’t expect
  • after further review, the Voyager team generally accepts the August 2012 date as the date of interstellar arrival
  • The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause
  • expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020
  • , it was first questioned in August of 2012, with more speculation in December 2012, then in March of 2013
  • Then about a month ago
  • Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft
  • emitted signals are currently very dim, at about 23 watts — the power of a refrigerator light bulb
  • Voyager mission controllers still talk to or receive data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 every day
  • planetary alignment that only happens every 176 years enabled the two spacecraft to join together to reach all the outer planets in a 12 year time period
  • By the time the signals get to Earth, they are a fraction of a billion-billionth of a watt
  • Data from Voyager 1′s instruments are transmitted to Earth typically at 160 bits per second
  • signal from Voyager 1 takes about 17 hours to travel to Earth.
  • After the data are transmitted to JPL and processed by the science teams, Voyager data are made publicly available
  • 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.
  • While Voyager 1 will keep going, we will not always be able to communicate with it, as we do now
  • In 2025 all instruments will be turned off, and the science team will be able to operate the spacecraft for about 10 years after that to just get engineering data
  • In the year 40,272 AD, Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor
Mars Base

Listen to the Sounds of Interstellar Space, Recorded by Voyager 1 - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ar-space-recorded-by-voyager-1

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Voyager 1 was able to record the sounds of interstellar space. This helped the Voyager science team calculate the density of interstellar plasma
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