Voyager 2 reveals the dynamic, complex nature of the solar system’s edge (Space Science but not Rocket Science)
Data from two NASA spacecraft chart the boundary between the sun and the rest of the galaxy Humanity’s second ambassador to interstellar space has reported back from the frontiers of the solar system — with the message that the border of the sun’s territory is a complex and ever-changing place. Late last year, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft broke through the heliopause , the boundary where the solar wind gives way to the plasma that permeates the galaxy ( SN: 12/10/18) . Six years earlier, its sister probe, Voyager 1, made its own heliopause crossing ( SN: 9/12/13) . Now, the combined results of these two journeys, published online November 4 in several papers in Nature Astronomy , offer the most detailed look yet at this largely unexplored region of space. These two robotic explorers “are taking humankind to astonishing new places that 60 years ago we never imagined doing,” says Gary Zank, a space physicist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who was not inv...
