4 ms·

Voyager near Solar System's edge

• vibragiel 16y ago
  There are several definitions of "Solar System edge", and all of them are so diffuse that we get these periodic reports, and we'll be getting them for a while.
  • iwwr 16y ago
    The Sun's gravitational influence extends up to about 1-2LY, beyond that the rest of the galaxy would have a stronger tug on things. From wikipedia: "As of November 12, 2010, Voyager 1 was about 115.251 AU (17.242 billion km, or 10.712 billion miles) or 0.002 of a light-year from the Sun" The solar system does not end at the heliopause, lots of things still orbit farther out.
  • kondro 16y ago
    But I think we can all agree that it is very, very far away.
    • retube 16y ago
      on a cosmological scale it's but a hair's breadth from here to there...
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• retube 16y ago
  I forget where I read it, but apparently the Voyager command centre is a couple of terminals in the corner of a computer room at JPL that have a little sign stuck on them: "Please don't touch - live voyager mission" or words to that affect.
  • hugh3 16y ago
    Sounds likely. On the other hand, there's still some decent-sized resources going into the project. When I visited the Tidbinbilla space tracking station I was told that the 70m dish there was at that moment busy communicating with one of the Voyagers. I have no idea whether there's still anyone working full time on Voyager. It sounds a little dull, because I'm pretty sure I've been reading these "Voyager reaches heliopause" articles for about ten years now, and there sure as hell ain't much beyond that...