NASA’s aging Voyager 1 probe, 35 years and 11 billion miles outbound from Earth, has crossed into an unexpected, exceedingly remote region of the solar system that may represent the spacecraft’s final step before leaving the sun’s influence and moving into the vast realm of interstellar space.
The region is believed to be a sort of “magnetic highway” allowing high-energy charged particles from ancient supernova explosions to move into the sun’s sphere of influence and for lower-energy particles to move out into deep space.
“This is really another exciting step in the Voyager journey of exploration,” Project Scientist Ed Stone told reporters Monday. “Voyager’s discovered a new region of the heliosphere that we had not realized was there. It’s a magnetic highway where the magnetic field of the sun — we’re still inside apparently — but the magnetic field is connected to the outside. So it’s like a highway, letting particles in and out.”
via cnet
