Voyager 1
Voyager 1, one of two sister spacecraft launched by NASA 44 years ago, is now the most distant man-made object in space. But Voyager 1 is still on its way to the infinite universe.
For a long time, the spacecraft has passed through the top of the solar wind layer (the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space) into interstellar space.
Now, new research led by Cornell University shows that instruments have detected interstellar plasma waves, detecting interstellar space buzzes for the first time.
Stella Koch Ocker, a doctoral student in astronomy at Cornell, scrutinized data coming back from more than 14 billion miles away and found the signal. It’s very faint and monotonous because it has a very narrow bandwidth,” Ocker said. We’re detecting a faint, persistent buzz of interstellar gas.”
The work allows scientists to understand how the interstellar medium interacts with the solar wind and how the interstellar environment shapes and changes the protective layers of the solar system’s heliosphere, Oak said.
Launched in September 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew past Jupiter in 1979 and then flew past Saturn in late 1980. Voyager 1 traveled at approximately 38,000 mph and crossed the top of the solar wind layer in August 2012.
Upon entering interstellar space, the spacecraft’s plasma wave system detected perturbations in the gas. However, between the two outbursts caused by the Sun, the team found a steady, persistent signal from the faint, near-vacuum of interstellar space.
The interstellar medium is like a hair-trigger,” said James Cordes, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University. And when our sun erupts, it’s like a sudden flash of lightning, and then it goes back to being gross.”
According to Oke, there is more faint activity in the interstellar gas than scientists previously thought, allowing researchers to track the spatial distribution of the plasma, which is undisturbed by solar eruptions.
Shami Chatterjee, a researcher at Cornell University, explained the importance of continuously tracking the density of interstellar space. We never had the opportunity to measure it,” Chatterjee said. Now, we know we don’t need a chance burst associated with the Sun to measure interstellar plasma. Whatever the sun is doing, Voyager 1 will send back details. The spacecraft says, ‘This is the interstellar plasma density I’m traveling through right now. And now this. And again this. And then again that.’ Voyager 1 traverses great distances and will continue to send back data.”
Voyager 1 left Earth with a gold record created by a committee chaired by the late Carl Sagan, a Cornell University professor, and technology from the mid-1970s. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the power required to send a signal to Earth was 22 watts. The spacecraft has nearly 70 kilobytes of computer memory and began its mission with a data rate of 21 kilobits per second.
Since there is now a distance of 14 billion miles, the communication rate has been reduced to 160 bits per second.
The new study was published in the May 10, 2021 issue of Nature Astronomy.
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