The Voyager team put the new data together with information from the other instruments onboard, they calculated the moment voyager 1 escaped the solar system occurred on or about 25 August, 2012. Sensors on Voyager had been indicating for some time that its local environment had changed.
Voyager is now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars. Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System.
The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.
Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic meter of space.
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Voyager is now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars. Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System.
The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.
Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic meter of space.
Read more »
