The Voyagers Found a Small Surprise in Interstellar Space – The Atlantic

Read: The Voyager mission made the solar system a real place

More than 40 years ago, Gurnett designed and built one of the instruments on the Voyager mission that can sense such things. Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 followed in 2018. But the spacecraft actually havent left the solar system, despite many headlines over the years claiming that they have. This might seem, at first glance, a little contradictoryhow can something exist in the space between stars and within the solar system at the same time? Arent those two different things?

From our perspective, interstellar space begins when sun particles cant go any farther. The sun releases a steady current of high-energy particles in all directions, all the time, and this solar wind encompasses the planets, their moons, and other celestial bodies in a protective bubble called the heliosphere. Scientists had predicted that the breeze would stop where it met the cold particles of the interstellar medium, which is sprinkled with material left behind by supernovas, the deaths of other stars. But they didnt know exactly where this sphere of the suns influence stopped until 2012, when Voyager 1 detected the beginning of a different cosmic environment. Its not impossible, but its very difficult for solar plasmas to cross that boundary, Bill Kurth, a research scientist at the University of Iowa and Gurnetts co-author on the new findings, told me.

Read: Its easier to leave the solar system than to reach the sun

This is where the Voyagers are, beyond the heliosphere. Kurth once published a commentary in a science journal that said leaving the heliosphere was more or less the same as leaving the solar system. I was soundly criticized, he said, laughing. Because while the solar wind blows quite far120 astronomical units, with a single unit equal to the distance between the Earth and the sunour stars influence extends even deeper. Not through warmth, but through gravity.

The suns gravity can keep objects in its orbit far beyond where the heliosphere ends. As the Voyagers continue on their journey, eventually they will enter the Oort cloud, a region of icy objects past Pluto. Because those objects are gravitationally bound to the sun, they still count as ours. This is where the solar system truly endspast the far edge of the Oort cloud, which is somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 astronomical units away. Even though Voyager 1s out and beyond 150 astronomical units, its got a long, long ways to go before it gets beyond the Oort cloud, Kurth says. It will be another few hundred years before the Voyagers reach this region, and tens of thousands more before they pass through to the other side.

Read: When will the Voyagers stop calling home?

When the Voyagers launched in 1977, the notion of doing science so far from our own planet, out in interstellar space, was a distant thought. NASA was focused on swinging by our neighboring planets and moons to collect valuable data and beautiful pictures. After the grand tour, the spacecraft just kept going. In the years since, mission managers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory have turned off various components on the two spacecraft, from science instruments to heaters, rationing every watt of power to keep the machines going. Someday, engineers may be forced to turn off one of the elements that help the spacecraft communicate with Earth, a process that takes about 20 hours each way. Its a risky move. If it does work, then we gain two more watts, Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager, told me last year. If it doesnt, then we lose the mission."