Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Voyager-1 has officially become the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
We're a bit late with the news though, it actually did it on August 25th last year,
just a few days before the 35th anniversary of it's blast off on September 8th 1977.
The 'official' bit comes from the data collected by scientists working on the project and analysing
it's Plasma Wave Science instrument, which in April and May this year and October and
November of 2012 began to measure a huge increase in the amount of charged particles in the
vicinity of the craft - a theoretical tell-tale sign that the ship was breaking free of the
sun's influence.
Nasa scientist Ed Stone explained how the scientists were able to confirm the discovery
And so now we know. The solar system extends to 121 times the distance from the Earth to
the sun -12 billion miles or 17 light-hours away.
Despite being dinosaur technology by modern standards, Voyager is still educating us as
it hurtles towards the stars at 100,000mph, although it won't actually pass near one for
nearly 40,000 years. In the meantime, it will study the space between the stars, itself
formed by ancient stellar explosions.