NASA's Voyager 1 probe is nearing the edge of our solar system after 33 years and nearly 11 billion miles of spaceflight. The spacecraft may make the final crossing into interstellar space in just four more years, NASA announced today (Dec. 13).
The Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a region of space in the outer solar system where the speed of solar wind – charged particles streaming from the sun – is effectively zero. NASA scientists think the steep drop in solar wind speed is a sign that it has been blown sideways by a more powerful interstellar wind that blows in the spaces between stars.
Voyager 1 has traveled about 10.8 billion miles (17.4 billion kilometers) from the sun since it launched on Sept. 5, 1977 on a mission to swing by the gas giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn.
But Voyager 1 did not stop there. It continued on its way and in 2004 crossed a solar system boundary known as the termination shock – the border at which the sun's supersonic solar wind crosses a shockwave, slows down and heats up.
The region immediately beyond the termination shock, where Voyager 1 is now, is called the heliosheath. Voyager 1 was actually one of two spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer solar system. On Aug. 20 of that year, just a few weeks before Voyager 1's launch, NASA launched Voyager 2 on a grand tour of the solar system that flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Both spacecraft rely on nuclear power sources to generate electricity.
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