Eleven billion miles from Earth, NASA's long-lived Voyager 2 probe, still beaming back data 41 years after its launch in 1977, has finally moved into interstellar space, scientists revealed Monday, joining its sister ship Voyager 1 in the vast, uncharted realm between the stars.
Voyager 2 moved past the boundary of the heliosphere, the protective bubble defined by the sun's magnetic field and electrically charged solar wind, on Nov. 5. The transition was marked by a sharp decline in the number of charged particles detected by the spacecraft's plasma science experiment, or PLS.
The instrument has not detected any signs of the solar wind since then....
Dr. Terry Mortenson | 1/16/2009
