NASA, HUMANITY, MAKES NEWS AS VOYAGER 2 HEADS INTO INTERSTELLAR SPACE
This is actually big news. With all the tumult and BS we’re immersed in with our 24-hour news cycles and various orange haired personalities, human science does move on. Well, on and out. While we can still try to delay what is real when it comes to climate science, we can’t deny this truth. For the second time every in history, a man-made object has entered interstellar space. And for you luddites, that means the massive space between stars. It is the space that makes up the vast majority of our reality. Voyager 2 has gone where no man has gone before, except Voyager 1.
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VOYAGERS 1 AND 2 FIRST LAUNCHED 41 YEARS AGO IN 1977
NASA announced the news in Washington at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. This is the latest in a story which began back in 1977. That’s the year that NASA launched first Voyager 2 and then Voyager 1. Their job was to explore the planets Jupiter and Saturn. But also to explore the space beyond. There’s a LOT of space beyond….. But the probes sent us back a ton of amazing data on the outer solar system. But their missions have taken them further and further out and away.
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VOYAGER 2 NOW TRAVELING AT 34,191 MPH, 290 MILLION MILES A YEAR
It was in 2013 when Voyager 1 left the heliosphere and entered interstellar space. And now Voyager 2 also just left the Sun’s heliosphere for interstellar space. For context this means that Voyager 2 is 11 billion miles from our sun. Its speed is 34,191 miles per hour. That translates into 290 million miles every year. There’s one last section of our solar system, the hypothetical Oort cloud where objects are still under the sun’s gravitational influence. Voyager 2 won’t reach that for another 3 centuries. But it will take another 30,000 to go all the way thru it.
So let’s just hope we build faster vehicles soon, right? But still this is exciting news. And now back to the ground here at home.
