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Voyager 1 has left the solar system
- kibwen 14y agoI don't think this is anything new? We've had reports for over a year that Voyager has been getting anomalous readings. Whether or not that indicates having "left the solar system" is still a matter of debate (unless this article is trying to say that the debate has been settled), although it's certainly still exciting.
- richeyrw 14y agoAnyone remember that science fiction story, where the first ship to leave the solar system shatters some shell. And that it's later discovered that all stars have the same shell, which is impermeable from the outside. Sort of an enforced prime directive by unknown powers? This reminded me of that, and despite many searches I'm not getting any hits.
- gojomo 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Spheres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Spheres
- richeyrw 14y agoThanks!
- jlgreco 14y agoReminds me of the "celestial spheres" model of the universe where heavenly bodies (orbiting the earth of course) were "held up" because they were embedded into a sort of matryoshka series of crystal spheres made of a supposed 5th element, a solid æther. Of course this model did little to explain retrograde motion.. ;)
- jjjeffrey 14y agoIf a spacecraft were to travel orthogonal to the plane on which planets orbit the sun, would it experience the heliosheath as it exits the solar system? For that matter, have there been any spacecraft launched that didn't travel on the orbital plane (ignoring earth-orbiting spacecraft)?
- rohansingh 14y agoYes, it would. The heliosphere is not spherical, but the solar wind exists in all directions. The orbital plane is due to conservation of angular momentum, a completely different phenomenon.
- youngerdryas 14y agoVoyager 1 is at an ecliptic latitude of 34.9°, according to Wikipedia, so it is about 5.7 billion miles above the ecliptic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ecliptic_grid_globe.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ecliptic_grid_globe.png Edit: Whoops 5.7 not 7.5
- kryptiskt 14y agoUlysses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)) was sent into a polar orbit around the sun.
- TDL 14y agoNot trying to troll, but how many times has Voyager left the solar system now? Do we even have a clear boundary of where the solar system ends? edited for clarity.
- lftl 14y agoDo we even have a clear boundary of where the solar system ends? From what I gather as a layman, the answer to this is no, which in turn answers why Voyager has "left" numerous times. From the bit I've read Voyager has already forced some rethinking on what the edges of the solar system look like, and it may very well cause a few more.
- charonn0 14y agoThat's one of the things Voyager hopes to find out for us, I think.
- tragomaskhalos 14y agoThere really needs to be one of those signs, y'know, "You are now leaving the Solar System - please drive carefully"
- novakinblood 14y agoMaybe I'm just emotional today but the "Acknowledgments" section for the accepted journal was touching. I can only imagine what it felt like to complete the work of a good friend.
- js2 14y agoPrevious times it has left: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4867577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4867577 (106 days ago) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619731 (165 days ago) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4483757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4483757 (195 days ago) Seems like we're still not sure it's left due to lack of agreement on what constitutes leaving: However, Webber notes, scientists are continuing to debate whether Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space or entered a separate, undefined region beyond the solar system.
- cpeterso 14y agoMaybe Voyager 1 keeps coming back then leaving again? :)
- wiredfool 14y agoAre they using a reentrant space probe?
- 1SaltwaterC 14y agoDid they send Schrödinger's cat with Voyager 1?
- daimyoyo 14y agoWe'll never know.
- devgutt 14y agoMaybe this a hidden new feature of gravity, and it is impossible to get out of the heliosphere. OMG it's a trap.
- gngeal 14y ago"Seems like we're still not sure it's left due to lack of agreement on what constitutes leaving" It's like leaving a country by staying in place while the borders are being redrawn on the map. ;)
- raverbashing 14y agoBeyond the discussion of 'how many times it has left already' I wonder what's the next Voyager spacecraft. New Horizons certainly looks like it's going to help, it's a flyby mission to Pluto, and it's going faster than Voyager 1/2 apparently (haven't checked) With modern equipment and transmission technology, hopefully it will help solve part of the mystery (or get its circuits fried with excess radiation outside of the solar system - too far fetched?)
- ndonnellan 14y agoIt was faster at launch, but V1 has gained more momentum. From wikipedia: ' However, it will not be the fastest spacecraft to leave the Solar System. This record is held by Voyager 1, currently travelling at 17.145 km/s (38,400 mph) relative to the Sun. Voyager 1 attained greater hyperbolic excess velocity from Jupiter and Saturn gravitational slingshots than New Horizons '
- meerita 14y agoMaybe someone with experience in the field of communications and space can clarify my doubts: how we can improve the flow of data transmission to Earth? Imagine a string of satellites that communicate with each other so that the message reaches the earth faster distributed way. Now it seems that communications between satellites and Earth are slower and it has greater delays.
- kenj0418 14y agoMaybe I'm not understanding your question, but adding intermediate satellites/probes wouldn't improve the speed of communications. The limiting factor is the speed of light. Adding additional hops in between would just add a slight processing delay, but definately not change the overall latency. Voyager is very far away and it's going to take a while to talk to it no matter what you do.
- ndonnellan 14y agoSubspace relays! Just kidding. But more seriously, intermediate satellites could possibly improve the transfer rate of information by acting as signal boosters. However, they would have to span substantial fractions of space between points to be useful. We only have a few spacecraft between earth and voyager. I.e. new horizons boosts voyager's signal back to earth (cassini maybe?). And in voyager's case it's probably irrelevant given how old the hardware is and how weak the power source has become.
- celias 14y agoCORRECTED PRESS RELEASE Please note that the headline on this release has been changed to better represent the findings reported in the study. New title - "Voyager 1 has entered a new region of space, sudden changes in cosmic rays indicate"
- devindotcom 14y agoWe're hearing from our NASA contacts that mission control says it has NOT left the solar system (although it's certainly getting there).
- netcraft 14y agoI want to say there has been some discussion about space travel to other worlds and "leaving too soon", ie - if you launch today, a space craft that launches to the same destination a year from now would beat you there, because the technology would have progressed to the point that the later ship was much faster. If we were to launch a state of the art probe today, how long would it take to get to where voyager 1 is now after 35 years of travel?
- rthomas6 14y agoConversely, this means that it's hard to find the optimal time of launch, since waiting would always provide a better launch in the future.
- wiredfool 14y agoWell, since most of the speed is from slingshot gravitational interactions, there's 2 parts to it. * How well are the planets aligned * How well can you exploit that Some of the current probes have done multiple flybys of inner solar system bodies to boost speed to reach the outer planets. Voyager 1 and 2 had a relatively direct route to take advantage of a once in a lifetime alignment of the outer planets.
- rthomas6 14y agoThat takes care of the optimization problem, then. :)
- ISL 14y agoAbout the same. New Horizons was faster at launch, but the real boosts come from gravitational assists. Clever choices of orbits buy you speed - stealing an infinitesimal fraction of Jupiter's momentum is much more efficient than any propulsion technology in use. If that ever changes, then "too soon" will have become reality. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons "New Horizons is often given the title of Fastest Spacecraft Ever Launched, although the Helios probes are arguably the holders of that title as a result of speed gained while falling toward the Sun. New Horizons, however, achieved the highest launch velocity and thus left Earth faster than any other spacecraft to date. It is also the first spacecraft launched directly into a solar escape trajectory, which requires an approximate velocity of 16.5 km/s (36,900 mph), plus losses, all to be provided by the launcher. However, it will not be the fastest spacecraft to leave the Solar System. This record is held by Voyager 1, currently travelling at 17.145 km/s (38,400 mph) relative to the Sun. Voyager 1 attained greater hyperbolic excess velocity from Jupiter and Saturn gravitational slingshots than New Horizons. Other spacecraft, such as Helios 1 & 2, can also be measured as the fastest objects, due to their orbital velocity relative to the Sun at perihelion. However, because they remain in solar orbit, their orbital energy relative to the Sun is lower than the five probes, and three other third stages on hyperbolic trajectories, including New Horizons, that achieved solar escape velocity, as the Sun has a much deeper gravitational well than Earth."
- andydev 14y agohttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-107 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-107 "The Voyager team is aware of reports today that NASA's Voyager 1 has left the solar system," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
- ErikRogneby 14y agoIf the engineers that worked on Voyager 1 haven't won an award yet for the longevity and success of this program it's a damn shame. It might be time to throw together a site chronicling old stuff in space that still works.
- angersock 14y agoOnly if it were a timeline, put alongside services that we use every day--I'd like to see the uptime on Curiosity or something next to this quarter's cloud outage.
- lukejduncan 14y agoJust this morning I listened to the Voyager Engineering Team on an old NPR Radio Lab episode where the crew mentioned that every day they check their Google Alerts to see if Voyager has left our solar system. I imagine their celebrating today.
- alexkus 14y agoFrom: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21866532 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21866532 The Voyager project scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ed Stone, said he wanted to see a reorientation of the magnetic fields around the probe before declaring it to be in interstellar space. This was a "critical marker", he added. "…that change of direction has not yet been observed."
- acchow 14y agoIs the change in the magnetic field direction sudden? Or gradual?
- liquidise 14y agoWhile the Peer Review process is critical to the scientific method, it does slow down information. To advertise this as a recent event when the article itself clearly states the measurements are from August 2012 is a tad disingenuous.
- anigbrowl 14y agoWhen it is finally agreed that it has left (which presumably will occur within the next year or two), What Then? I'm not hopeful that we'll be surprised in a major by the data coming from outside the heliosphere; to be honest I'm a bit worried that a lack of novelty will increase public apathy - 'We made it out! ...and that's all folks, shows over.' It's a bit like the moon landings; having been there and run out of convincing reasons to go back, we're heading back to that situation of no living person having walked on the surface of another world (http://xkcd.com/893/ http://xkcd.com/893/). Props to Elon Musk etc., but I'm not all that optimistic about private enterprise just filling this niche.
- sharkweek 14y agoI'm sniping this from a reddit comment, but I'm also now (jokingly) hoping that Voyager just ends up hitting a spherical wall that's covered in painted stars and galaxies. Could you imagine the ridiculousness of that, and the conversations that would occur? Ah the potential hilarity...
- anigbrowl 14y agoAt least one person would have 'I told you so' rights... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chu
- camus 14y agoAre they still able to track Voyager or is it just computation ? how do they communicate with it ?
- jofer 14y agoRadio. Voyager is nuclear powered (Thought not in the sense you're probably thinking. It's a nuclear source and a thermoelectric cell.), and many (most?) of the instruments are still functioning and sending signals back. It really is quite astounding when you think about it! Launched in 1977, traveled through the solar system, and still functioning!
- princeverma 14y agoNo, it hasn't left the solar system. An update from NASA: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/m/news/index.cfm?release=2013-107 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/m/news/index.cfm?release=2013-107
- lelf 14y agoBesides ‘oh, how many times it will left it?’, I wonder why many find someone's (another) whining about google reader or new bugs in rails more interesting than this.
- kenjackson 14y agoDumb question... How is Voyager able to transmit such a great distance, even after all these years? Hasn't its battery died yet? Also how does it power its sensors (to measure radiation and such)?
- davidroberts 14y agoWikipedia has a good article about it that answers those questions.
- robryan 14y agoNuclear power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Power Although even that will come to an end in around 2025.
- davidroberts 14y agoIt just thrills the heck out of me that this machine made 35 years ago and now flying 5 billion miles away is still communicating and doing science.
- xefer 14y agoIt's not even 1/7th of the way to the aphelion of minor planet Sedna: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sedna+aphelion+/+voyager+1+distance+to+sun http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sedna+aphelion+/+voyage...