Data from Voyager 2 suggests it is entering interstellar space
New data since August from Voyager 2 now suggests it is finally leaving the heliosphere of the solar system and entering interstellar space.
Since late August, the Cosmic Ray Subsystem instrument on Voyager 2 has measured about a 5 percent increase in the rate of cosmic rays hitting the spacecraft compared to early August. The probe’s Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument has detected a similar increase in higher-energy cosmic rays.
Cosmic rays are fast-moving particles that originate outside the solar system. Some of these cosmic rays are blocked by the heliosphere, so mission planners expect that Voyager 2 will measure an increase in the rate of cosmic rays as it approaches and crosses the boundary of the heliosphere.
In May 2012, Voyager 1 experienced an increase in the rate of cosmic rays similar to what Voyager 2 is now detecting. That was about three months before Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space.
The scientists warn that there is great uncertainty here, and that the actual transition into interstellar space might take longer than with Voyager 1 since Voyager 2 is traveling in a different direction and is leaving during a different time in the solar cycle.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
New data since August from Voyager 2 now suggests it is finally leaving the heliosphere of the solar system and entering interstellar space.
Since late August, the Cosmic Ray Subsystem instrument on Voyager 2 has measured about a 5 percent increase in the rate of cosmic rays hitting the spacecraft compared to early August. The probe’s Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument has detected a similar increase in higher-energy cosmic rays.
Cosmic rays are fast-moving particles that originate outside the solar system. Some of these cosmic rays are blocked by the heliosphere, so mission planners expect that Voyager 2 will measure an increase in the rate of cosmic rays as it approaches and crosses the boundary of the heliosphere.
In May 2012, Voyager 1 experienced an increase in the rate of cosmic rays similar to what Voyager 2 is now detecting. That was about three months before Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space.
The scientists warn that there is great uncertainty here, and that the actual transition into interstellar space might take longer than with Voyager 1 since Voyager 2 is traveling in a different direction and is leaving during a different time in the solar cycle.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It still amazes me that of the 4 interplanetary/now interstellar probes that were launched in the 1970’s we are still in communication with 2 of them and only lost touch with another (Pioneer 10) just a few years ago.
It further amazes me, and not in a good way, that we have only launched 1 more in all that time (New Horizons).
Building and launching them is a small pittance. The real costs are in transforming the data into something usable and in monitoring the spacecraft’s operations.
Perhaps AI will help with the data processing. A great problem to have would be so many probes gathering so much data that it sits in a memory bank in a usuable format but that no human had time to go through it all.
Of course, there isn’t much glory in that for PI’s. But it would allow for endless study and discovery in the future.
Voyager’s Golden Record
“Dark was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”
Blind Willie Johnson; December 1927
https://youtu.be/V8AuYmID4wc
3:24
“Among those on the committee who chose the music for the disc was the cosmologist, astrophysicist and popularizer of all things astronomical Carl Sagan. The choices he and his colleagues made included the usual suspects — Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. But there’s also an odd little tune on the disc, recorded in 1927 by a Texan preacher and street-corner blues singer, Blind Willie Johnson. “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”, adapted from an 18th-century hymn, is wordless, consisting only of Johnson’s slide guitar and his resonant, gospely, moaning hum. The song was picked by Sagan, who said it concerns a situation Johnson — and humanity — faced many times: “Nightfall with no place to sleep”.
Wodun is quite correct. My understanding is that we have data that has never been analyzed and is stored on types of media and in types of formats (analog!) such that it is virtually unreadable today as no one makes the needed hardware or replacement parts any more – if you are lucky enough to find what you need in an obscure corner – (or even if they were, no one knows how to fix a broken device or run it when fixed as the manuals were long since deep sixed) and no one is trained in the computer languages in question as they are long since obsolete. Not to mention the durability of some storage media such as tape, which deteriorates over time, making the physical existence of some data subject to an ever narrowing window.
This gives some idea of the challenge
https://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/
Col Beausabre is also correct. NASA is like most organizations, and obsolete hardware and software is kept only for a certain amount of time before being discarded. It is expensive to keep stuff, and if it is never going to be used again, there is no reason to keep it. Fortunately, data is considered more valuable, but it is not well maintained (e.g. filed to modern file systems, especially before degradation sets in).
Four years ago, an abandoned NASA spacecraft was attempted to by “pirated” by a group of citizens (with permission of its original owner, so it was not technically pirated). Talking to it was a problem, as the NASA systems were already gone. The group of citizens received quite a bit of help, from NASA, organizations, and fellow citizens.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140619-space-sun-nasa-astronomy-crowdsourcing/
Thank goodness that someone can emulate at least some of NASA’s obsolete equipment.
This is not always the case. Britain tried a “Doomsday Project” to celebrate the “Doomsday Book” after the Norman conquest of England. The original 900-year old book still exists and can be read, with some interpretation of abbreviations and Latin, but the data collected on computer media for the celebration could hardly be read after a mere 25 years (where were PDFs when they were really needed?).
Wodun wrote: “Of course, there isn’t much glory in that for PI’s. But it would allow for endless study and discovery in the future.”
Isn’t that why God gave us grad students?
Col. Beausabre,
You NEVER know what’s going to turn up at DRMO. I was poking around govdeals one afternoon and NASA was dumping a short ton of technical pieces, almost guarantee they wound up as scrap.
I dearly hope there are NASA collectors who poke around that site.