Voyager 1 Might Leave the Solar System Any Day Now, New Data Says
Voyager It was not projected to happen until 2014 The Voyager 1 spacecraft might be crossing the interstellar boundary at the edge of our solar system much sooner than scientists thought, according to new data from the probe itself and from the Cassini spacecraft. This milestone - marking the first Earth-born object ever to leave the sun's field of influence - could actually happen any day now. According to scientists' best estimates, it will happen by the end of 2012. Voyager 1 is careening away from the sun at 114,155 miles per hour, covering a mile in about 0.03 seconds, able to circumnavigate the globe in under 15 minutes. At that blinding speed, the spacecraft travels a billion miles every three years. Right now, it's cruising through the heliosheath, a zone that marks the outward boundary of the huge bubble of charged particles blowing out of the sun. Scientists are not...