Voyager II Nearing Solar System's Edge

Voyager II detects solar system's edge

(SPACE.com) -- Voyager II could pass beyond the outermost layer of our solar system, called the "termination shock," sometime within the next year, NASA scientists announced at a media teleconference today.

The milestone, which comes about a year after Voyager 1's crossing, comes earlier than expected and suggests to scientists that the edge of the shock is about one billion miles closer to the sun in the southern region of the solar system than in the north.

This implies that the heliosphere, a spherical bubble of charged low-energy particles created by our sun's solar wind, is irregularly shaped, bulging in the northern hemisphere and pressed inward in the south.

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Almost thirty years have passed since her launch and she is still working for us.

[edit on 5/23/2006 by Bibliophile]

God I love those ships...

Righteous finally we are going to get out of this sytstem....i know that anything trully groundbreaking will prolly be held from public view but I really hope that some information comes through that fundamentally challenges or changes the way we view our solar system/universe/multiverse whatever....it would just be nice to learn something that earth shattering.

Nice find

All the information they get they give out to those that want it. The thing is, aside from sounding interesting, there's very little the satellites can do out there.

For one, space is big. Really big. I could go on for hours just blasting your mind how hugely, absurdedly really, big it is.

Secondly, the spacecrafts weren't designed for any kind of mission beyond Saturn - all that stuff on Uranus and Neptune were just bonus really.

And this, this is still just bonus. There's a few experiments and observations they can do at this far out - but also, at this far out, our sun isn't even the brightest star in the sky anymore! We're lost, set adrift the large, black, stary night. Insignificant is the term. A microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, and we are but the size of cells compared to it as a beachball.

When you realize that, then holding back any information that just goes to show that is purposeless.

I mean, what kind of information could they hold back? Even if there was a FLEET, thousands and thousands of extraterrestial battleships, each ship 5 kilometers large, we wouldn't have a hope of catching a picture of it unless it passed, for all intents and purposes, right in front of us. The chances of that happening, even if such a fleet existed, would be the chances of having a Tornadoe pass right by your face in Hawaii.

No, the major beauty of this is that we smiply DID IT. We have sent 2 spacecrafts beyond the solar boundaries...

Well... kinda. There's still the Oort cloud, but at what point does interstellar debris begin and solar confines end?

may be this is out of the topic.....but, where are those spacecraft going anyway, to the closer star near by?

Voyager 1 and 2 were not aimed at any particular stellar system. They were put on a trajectory for an optimum flyby of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and once they passed them they are just continuing on out of the system. Those two spacecraft represent all that earthlings are capable of doing well. They have done and are continuing to do a superb job--God Speed Voyager 2.

Just curious. Have there been any recent pictures transmitted from Voyager II? I realize it takes a very long time for anything to be received from that far out, but there must be something.

I don't think any images have been taken since it's last planet fly-by. There wouldn't really be much of anything interesting to take photos of anyway.

A couple of points that this story overlooks...

Firstly, Voyager 1 & 2 have in fact travelled a lot further than calculus predicts, both craft are in fact off course.

We do not understand what has caused this and it maybe some mundane variable such as heat generated by the electronics on board causing acceleration in thrust. However, this is unlikely to be the case as both voyager 1 & voyager 2 are off course by exactly the same amount.

This could have been caused by something very interesting, either we have got our calculations wrong or there is an unknown force exerting its influence on voyager.

NASA has handed over all of their mission data which was still on floppy disks to a third party for a mission reconstruction. The results of this reconstruction will tell us where the force was originally felt by voyager, How strong the force is, and the directions of the force.

If the direction of the force is the sun, then we have miscalculated the effects of the solar wind. If the direction of the force is the earth then this would indicate an error in the way the data has been collected.

However, if the force direction is in an opposite direction to the heading of voyager this would indicate that there is a serious error in our calculations and a serious misunderstanding in our basic understanding of gravity...

The first part of a reconstruction has been completed. 46 filling cabinets full of floppy disks has had to be recompiled onto dvds. Some of the data had to have complex Data saving algorithms to recover corrupt data. All of the data has now been compiled and a mission reconstruction / simulation can begin.

The results will be in later this year. I will keep you all updated.

All of the best

Neon HaZe

I hope it goes into a huge shipping lane in space.

i hope it's carrying microorganisms.

about that shipping lane...

i just have horrible thoughts that a)

here we are thinking we are so clever, our little voyager is going out into the distance yonder, its carrying all reference to what man is, and suddenly whack it gets taken out by a cruising space ship from some other system..

"Driver, what the hell was that?"

"Nuthin Captain, just some roadkill!"

b) we get destoyed, or we destroy ourselves and all that is left is Voyager!!! Aliens would be like, what the hell? or cue in a)

lol, that would be funny.
But dont worry, a more sad event is when the universe ends, then
thell be nobody there to say...WTF ?

I can only hope that Voyager II has already been detected by other life forms & are watching it.

Originally posted by Neon Haze

Firstly, Voyager 1 & 2 have in fact travelled a lot further than calculus predicts, both craft are in fact off course.

my biggest thing to this is


theres 20+ other probes in the solar system that were/are perfectly ON course, why just Voyager, my bet is, its a simple miscaluclation from the 70's, when they were probably smoking too much pot

Right, and it has nothing to do with the fact that none of the other probes out there are anywhere near the edges of the Solar System.

your right

but the laws of physics dont suddenly change just because its the outer solar system, all the same laws still apply

not to be obtuse...but we dont really even understand ALL of the laws of physics....Light is doing funny things now...or atleast we are adavanced enough to see it. THat being said, we have no real base of knowledge from which to draw. We cannot make any conclusions about how space is or is not outside of our solar system. Whose to say that it is the same kind of "space"? No one....because as far as we know now no has even been as far as we've been.

It seems equally likely that space is different or space is the same. It is not hard to assume that if planets developed here but didnt develop there, is there a fundamental difference aside from gravitational fields to the formation of planets. Is it like soil here on earth...you can "grow" plants here but not there...and you can kind of grow them here but not as well as over there?

These are questions that no scientist can answer? Atleast not without LOTS of supposition, assumtion, and conjecture.

But...thats just the way it looks from my lil bubble of reality. Great thread by the way...im really intersted in this.

i guess we shall find out soon enough lol

allthough einstiens laws/theroys/postulates on gravity have stood up to every test/experiment so far

but it will be interesting, i wonder how long it will be before we "catch" upto the probes, mabye one day we will find them in space many years in the future!

That's wonderful....hopefully it runs into something interesting pretty soon. I don't have much time on this earth you know!