Ed Stone cannot say when the
Voyager-1 spaceship will leave the Solar System, but he believes the instant is
close. It could be any day, except it could also be several more years. The newest
data from this extraordinary probe suggests it is surfing right on the very
edge of our Sun's domain. Launched way back in 1977, the probe has now
travelled so far from home that its steady chatter of data takes 17 hours to
arrive at the US space agency's receiving system.
The particles streaming away
from our star have condensed to a drip at its present position, 18.5 billion km
from Earth. Particles soaring towards it from interstellar space, by contrast,
have jumped clearly in the past year. It all points to a forthcoming departure,
which would make Voyager the first man-made object to cross into the space
between the stars.
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