Voyager 1 Has Entered Interstellar Space, NASA Confirms Based on 3 Solar Eruption Events
ByAfter months of traveling through space, NASA has gathered enough data from the Voyager 1 probe to confirm the spacecraft is in interstellar space.
According to Space.com, NASA scientists made their conclusion based on a large solar eruption, also known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). NASA scientists measured the particles surrounding the Voyager 1 after the CME caused them to vibrate strongly.
NASA announced in Aug. 2012 that the Voyager 1 left the sun's heliosphere, a magnetic bubble of charged particles. The density most recently measured by NASA was much greater than previous readings.
"Normally, interstellar space is like a quiet lake," Ed Stone, a Voyager 1 mission project scientist since 1972 from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a press release. "But when our sun has a burst, it sends a shock wave outward that reaches Voyager about a year later. The wave causes the plasma surrounding the spacecraft to sing."
The CME that helped NASA scientists determine Voyager 1's position occurred in March 2012 and caught up to the spacecraft in April 2013. With a previously unnoticed CME in late 2012 and based on the Voyager 1's traveling speed, the scientists pinpointed the probe's entry to interstellar space to just after it left the heliosphere.
Lastly, NASA measured a CME from earlier this year in March, leading mission managers to confirm Voyager 1's travel status Monday.
"All is not quiet around Voyager," Don Gurnett, principal investigator of the plasma wave instrument on Voyager at the University of Iowa, said in the release. "We're excited to analyze these new data. So far, we can say that it confirms we are in interstellar space."
Voyager 2 is NASA's twin to the Voyager 1 spacecraft and the space agency expects it to enter interstellar space two years after its predecessor. Both probes were launched within 16 days of each other in 1977.