Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years

originally posted by: mikos123
Why the extension though? What additional scientific data can they get from it? I just want to see the justification the team would have had when speaking to head of NASA for extension.

The Voyagers have passed the heliopause, which is the point of our solar system that the force of the solar wind is no longer strong enough to push back interstellar materials from other stars, such as gasses, plasma, and particles.

The Voyagers are in a unique position to measure some of that stuff from the interstellar medium.

For Voyager 1, New Discoveries Await in Interstellar Space

Form that article:

We've exited the material that's created by the sun, and we're in a truly alien environment. The material in which Voyager finds itself is not created by the sun; it's created, in fact, by our neighboring stars, supernova remnants and so forth."