Nasa's Voyager 2 sends back its first signal from interstellar space
Source: The Guardian
Twelve billion miles from Earth, there is an elusive boundary that marks the edge of the sun’s realm and the start of interstellar space. Voyager 2, the longest-running space mission, has finally beamed back a faint signal from the other side of that frontier, 42 years after its launch.
The Nasa craft is the second ever to travel beyond the heliosphere, the bubble of supersonic charged particles streaming outwards from the sun. Despite setting off a month ahead of its twin, Voyager 1, it crossed the threshold into interstellar space more than six years behind, after taking the scenic route across the solar system and providing what remain the only close-up images of Uranus and Neptune.
Now Voyager 2 has sent back the most detailed look yet at the edge of our solar system – despite Nasa scientists having no idea at the outset that it would survive to see this landmark.
“We didn’t know how large the bubble was and we certainly didn’t know that the spacecraft could live long enough to reach the edge of the bubble and enter interstellar space,” said Prof Ed Stone, of the California Institute of Technology, who has been working on the mission since before its launch in 1977.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/nov/04/nasa-voyager-2-sends-back-first-signal-from-interstellar-space
= new reply since forum marked as read
(you have to dig through their science sections)
Link to tweet
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Kenneth Chang @kchangnyt
Forty-two years ago, Jimmy Carter was president, and NASA's two Voyager spacecraft launched. Today, Jimmy Carter is still going, and so are the Voyagers! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/science/voyager-2-interstellar-solar-wind.html …
A view of Neptune and its moon Triton from a distance of about 3 million miles, taken by Voyager 2 during its flyby of the blue giant in 1989.
Voyager 2’s Discoveries From Interstellar Space
In its journey beyond the boundary of the solar wind’s bubble, the probe observed some notable differences from its twin, Voyager 1.
nytimes.com
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12:21 PM - Nov 4, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/science/voyager-2-interstellar-solar-wind.html
Wonder if it will suffer the same fate as its later iterations -
you expounding on this. It is amazing how some things that seem so disparate and far reaching actually tie back into each other. Reading the story about VGER 2 put me into a magical place ... what you wrote deepens it greatly. 
Link: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/index.html
NASA Article:
Nov. 1, 2019
Voyager 2 Illuminates Boundary of Interstellar Space
Link: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-2-illuminates-boundary-of-interstellar-space
(snip)
JPL WEB Site:
Link: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
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Space.com
Voyager 2's Trip to Interstellar Space Deepens Some Mysteries Beyond Our Solar System
Link: https://www.space.com/nasa-voyager-2-interstellar-space-mysteries.html
(snips)
(A quick note here: Entering interstellar space is not the same thing as leaving the solar system, because the sun's gravitational influence extends far beyond the heliosphere. Indeed, trillions of comets orbit in the Oort Cloud, thousands of AU from the sun, and they're still considered part of the solar system.)
But the Voyagers are nearing the end of the line. Each spacecraft is powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which convert to electricity the heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238. The RTGs' power output decreases over time as more and more of the plutonium decays.
KY........
......to NASA
...Amazing!
