Voyager 1 Now Confirmed to be in Interstellar Space
Chris Hadley / 10 years ago
Voyager 1 as many will know has been on its mission to explore the far reaches of our solar system since it was launched way back in 1977 and in the following years it has captured data about unknown planetary systems as it travels further and further away from the earth. Late last year NASA made an announcement to say that Voyager 1 had crossed a point known as the heliopause at which point it moves in to interstellar space.
As Voyager 1 continues to move further and further away from us at a rate of 17km/s (or around ~38028 miles per hour for reference) NASA has reported the probe has experienced a new tsunami wave for the third time which allows them to confirm for sure that it is really in interstellar space and out of our solar system for good.
Although the probe is a jaw dropping distance from us (where writing down the numeric distance is too long to comprehend) and it continues to move 325 million miles further each year, NASA predicts that Voyager 1 will still be able to continue its mission and report back to earth until 2025 (that’s another 3.5billion or so miles) at which point its generators will no longer be able to power the probes instruments and it will be left to move deeper into space alone.
Source: space.com