[news.yahoo.com]

Seems like every year for the pat few years we get to read an article about how Voyager 1 and 2 are "almost outside the Heliosphere"...

Well, now Voyager 1 has LEFT the Heliosphere, and is officially OUTSIDE the solar system we call home... after being launched September 5, 1977.

Voyager 1 sucessfully fulfilled it's "grand tour" mission, taking it past Jupiter and Saturn... On the way past Saturn, JPL had to make an agonizing decision: Alter course to fly by Titan, or miss all hope of seeing Titans surface and continue on to Neptune.
They chose to have a first look at Titan... only to find it covered in thick clouds.

As Saturn faded in the rear view mirror, Voyager 1 started it's "interstellar mission" in December of 1980.

Voyager 1 is headed away from the sun at 17.26 kilometers per second...
Communicating with Voyager 1 takes 16 hours, one way.
The on-board Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator is putting out less than 100 watts of electrical power, and should keep the spacecraft alive until about 2025, when the RTG's isotopes have decayed to the point where it's no longer able to put out enough power to keep the core systems alive.

In about 40,000 years it will pass within 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445, which is at present in the constellation Camelopardalis...

It will never again be as close to home as it is this second.

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
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Eureka, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2013 03:39PM by Paul F..

And in 2273, the remnant of the probe, now a self-aware alien machine that calls itself "Vger", enters Klingon space....

Quote
Paul F.
It will never again be as close to home as it is this second.

Never say never, somebody might bring V-ger back.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

God speed Vger.

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MacResource User Map: [www.zeemaps.com]#

Geez.. y'all ever WATCH the movie? That was Voyager 6... not Voyager 1. Totally different

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Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

--

--
Eureka, CA

Quote
Paul F.
Geez.. y'all ever WATCH the movie? That was Voyager 6... not Voyager 1. Totally different

Whoops.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

It will be interesting to see the type of data it sends back during this new leg of its voyage.

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It is what it is.

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N-OS X-tasy!
It will be interesting to see the type of data it sends back during this new leg of its voyage.

I am not so sure about this.

[www.nytimes.com]

For about three hours on Wednesday, Voyager 1 had left the solar system — before a rewritten news release headline pulled it back in

For about three hours on Wednesday, Voyager 1 had left the solar system — before a rewritten news release headline pulled it back in. Voyager 1, one of two spacecraft NASA launched in 1977 on a grand tour of the outer planets, is now nearly 11.5 billion miles from the Sun, speeding away at 38,000 miles per hour. In a paper accepted by the journal Geophysical Review Letters, William R. Webber of New Mexico State University and Frank B. McDonald of the University of Maryland reported that on Aug. 25 last year, the spacecraft observed a sudden change in the mix of cosmic rays hitting it.

Cosmic rays are high-speed charged particles, mostly protons. Voyager 1’s instruments recorded nearly a doubling of cosmic rays from outside the solar system, while the intensity of cosmic rays that had been trapped in the outer solar system dropped by 90 percent.

The American Geophysical Union, publisher of the journal, sent out the news Wednesday morning: “Voyager 1 has left the solar system.” NASA officials, surprised, countered with a contrary statement from Edward C. Stone, the Voyager project scientist. “It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space,” Dr. Stone said. He said that the critical indicator would be a change in the direction of the magnetic field, not cosmic rays, for marking the outermost boundary of the solar system. In their paper, Dr. Webber and Dr. McDonald (who died only six days after Voyager observed the shift in cosmic rays) did not claim that Voyager 1 was in interstellar space, but had entered a part of the solar system they called the “heliocliff.” The geophysical union then sent out another e-mail with the same article but a milder headline: “Voyager 1 has entered a new region of space.”

Well alrighty... Voyager 1 has reached the DOOR to the solar system, but it ain't been hit in the butt yet.

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Paul F.
-----
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
----
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--

--

--
Eureka, CA

"Voyager is really far away from home" - better headline?

I prefer " Kate Upton bares all at billb's house"
but I'd have a better chance of seeing Voyageur .

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