WASHINGTON: The Voyager 1 spacecraft is approaching the outer limit of the solar system but remains months or even years away from the farthest reach of the sun’s magnetic pull, NASA said.
In the meantime, the US space agency’s pioneering craft launched in 1977 is sending back a wealth of data on the final frontier of the solar bubble — or heliosphere — which scientists have dubbed the magnetic highway. “This strange, last region before interstellar space is coming into focus, thanks to Voyager 1, humankind’s most distant scout,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Three papers were published in the journal Science Thursday describing the last region that Voyager will cross before it enters interstellar space.
Voyager was about 11 billion miles away from the Sun — or 122 times the distances from the Earth to the Sun — when it reached the magnetic highway on Aug. 25.
Voyager approaches solar system’s outer limit
