The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported that the Voyager 1 has crossed the interstellar space after 35 years of journey.
The Voyager 1spacecraft was launched to space for an interstellar mission on September 7, 1977. It has been continuously collecting galactic cosmic rays which it transmits to NASA’s Deep Space Network .
The scientists had been waiting for the Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 to send a message to the communication facility that its mission has been achieved. On Friday, it seemed to have become reality as indicated by a sudden fall on the particles that originates from the sun and a sudden upturn on the galactic cosmic rays. While the space agency celebrates the event as the “first spacecraft that had escaped the solar system” which have happened last summer, not everyone is convinced.
"We think that the magnetic field within the solar system and in the interstellar are aligned enough that you can actually pass through without seeing a huge change in direction," University of Maryland physicist Marc Swisdak said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.
Edward Carroll Stone, a space scientist and former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is one of those who are quite uncertain on the report released by Swisdak’s team due to various computer models used during the presentation.
"We know where Voyager is in terms of distance and we know what it is observing. The challenge is relating that to these complex models of the interaction between the interstellar medium and the heliosphere," Stone said to Reuters.
Everyone has agreed though that the Voyager may have been on a “magnetic highway”. It is a new region in our solar system wherein the sun’s cosmic rays connect with the interstellar cosmic rays resulting to particles bouncing in different directions.
Swindak’s team is waiting for the Voyager 2 to send its own signal as an additional proof.
The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
