Going , work , bypast . After a momentous 41 - year journey , Voyager 2 has fulfilled its fate to leave the heliosphere and become the second interstellar spacecraft after Voyager 1,NASA has just confirmed .
The Voyager 2 investigation was establish by NASA on August 20 , 1977 , 16 24-hour interval before its twin Voyager 1 , on a mission to research Jupiter and Saturn . After this succeeder , Voyager 2 ’s mission to explore the Solar System extend and it went on to become the first spacecraft to research the ice titan , Uranus and Neptune . Ever since completing this part of its charge in 1989 , the pair of galactic wanderers has been steer towards deep space .
" For the 2nd time in history , a human being - made object has reached the space between the stars , " NASA said ina statementon Monday . " NASA ’s Voyager 2 probe now has drop dead the heliosphere – the protective bubble of subatomic particle and magnetised fields created by the Sun . "
It ’s worth noting that the space vehicle has not totally “ left the Solar System ” . Here , we are noting that Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space by eliminate the heliosheath , the outmost layer of the Sun ’s “ magnetic bubble ” beyond which the speed of solar wind dramatically spend .
It may be goodbye for now , but there is still study to be done . Unlike its twin , the Voyager 2 ballistic capsule is still armed with its Plasma Science ( PLS ) instrument , mean it should be able to beam back some invaluable information on the nature of the heliosheath and the interstellar medium outside our Solar System .
“ work on Voyager makes me feel like an explorer , because everything we ’re seeing is novel , ” added John Richardson , principal investigator for the PLS legal instrument and a primary inquiry scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge . “ Even though Voyager 1 get over the heliopause in 2012 , it did so at a different place and a unlike time , and without the PLS data . So we ’re still realise thing that no one has see before . ”
The Voyager spacecraft are also known fortheir Golden Records , two record player book that check sounds and image of living on Earth , design to act as a time capsule for intelligent extraterrestrial life or future humans .
Farewell , Voyager 2 , it ’s been a pleasure .
