

Voyager 1 has left the solar system - j4mie
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2013/2013-11.shtml

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js2
Previous times it has left:

\- <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4867577> (106 days ago)

\- <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619731> (165 days ago)

\- <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
Maybe Voyager 1 keeps coming back then leaving again? :)

~~~
1SaltwaterC
Did they send Schrödinger's cat with Voyager 1?

~~~
daimyoyo
We'll never know.

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richeyrw
Anyone 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
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Spheres>

~~~
jlgreco
Reminds 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.. ;)

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TDL
Not 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
_Do 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.

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princeverma
No, it hasn't left the solar system. An update from NASA:

<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/m/news/index.cfm?release=2013-107>

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jjjeffrey
If 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
Yes, 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.

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novakinblood
Maybe 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.

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netcraft
I 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
Conversely, 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
Well, 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
That takes care of the optimization problem, then. :)

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meerita
Maybe 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
Maybe 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
Subspace 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.

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andydev
<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.

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kibwen
I 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.

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anigbrowl
When 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/>).

Props to Elon Musk etc., but I'm not all that optimistic about private
enterprise just filling this niche.

~~~
sharkweek
I'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
At least one person would have 'I told you so' rights...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chu>

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lukejduncan
Just 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.

------
celias
CORRECTED 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"

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raverbashing
Beyond 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
It 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 '

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lelf
Besides ‘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.

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alexkus
From: <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
Is the change in the magnetic field direction sudden? Or gradual?

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davidroberts
It 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.

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xefer
It's not even 1/7th of the way to the aphelion of minor planet Sedna:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sedna+aphelion+/+voyage...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sedna+aphelion+/+voyager+1+distance+to+sun)

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liquidise
While 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.

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ErikRogneby
If 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
Only 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.

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kenjackson
Dumb 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
Wikipedia has a good article about it that answers those questions.

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devindotcom
We're hearing from our NASA contacts that mission control says it has NOT left
the solar system (although it's certainly getting there).

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camus
Are they still able to track Voyager or is it just computation ? how do they
communicate with it ?

~~~
jofer
Radio. 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!

