NEWS
By Chris Dolmetsch | June 3, 2005
NASA's Voyager I spacecraft, launched in 1977, has become the first spacecraft to cross into the outermost regions of the solar system before entering interstellar space. Voyager I's instruments measured new radio waves and an increase in the strength of beams of energized particles, which nearly reversed direction, on Dec. 17 as the spacecraft was about 8.72 billion miles from the sun, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. The evidence shows the spacecraft has crossed into a new region of the solar system before the sun's influence begins to fade and interstellar space begins, said Edward Stone of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NEWS
By Dennis O'Brien and Dennis O'Brien,Sun reporter | July 21, 2008
Physicist Rob Decker is obsessed with a region of space that has an ominous name: the termination shock. It's out there, at the very edge of the solar system, 90 times as far away as Earth is from the sun. It is the region where solar wind comes to a halt. There you will find huge, constant collisions as solar wind - the waves of hydrogen and helium plasma that shoot out from the sun at 1 million mph - crashes into a dense haze of charged particles flowing through interstellar space. Decker and his team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel used an instrument aboard the venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft this month to give astronomers the first detailed look at that smashup - in a region long shrouded in scientific mystery.
NEWS
By Douglas Birch and Douglas Birch,Staff Writer | June 8, 1993
Ralph McNutt thinks he may have heard some tiny pieces of the sun ricochet off the walls of the solar system -- composed of the sun, the planets and the thin soup of protons called the solar wind. That noise, Dr. McNutt says, is the first direct evidence that the walls are there.The physicist with Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory is part of a team of scientists analyzing data being gathered by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. Both flew past the outer planets a decade ago and are headed into the vast cold space among the stars.
NEWS
By Mary Knudson | June 8, 1991
The sun, in a periodic show of its force, is shooting off powerful solar flares that disrupt the Earth's magnetic force and could cause power shortages in the Northern United States over the next week and spark a display of the northern lights visible as far south as Maryland.This is a sun storm, and government scientists monitoring it in Boulder, Colo., have classified it as "severe," the category designating the highest degree of force.The last severe solar storm, in March 1989, caused power blackouts in northern New York and Canada.
NEWS
By Michael Stroh and Michael Stroh,SUN STAFF | November 6, 2003
Scientists have detected the first signs that Voyager 1, the most far-flung robotic explorer in NASA's fleet, has reached the fringes of the solar system and is closing on a milestone: becoming the first manmade object to breach interstellar space. A team led by Johns Hopkins University scientists reports today in the journal Nature that unusual measurements recorded in recent months indicate that the 26-year-old probe has arrived at a turbulent, little-understood boundary near the rim of the solar system.
NEWS
By Frank D. Roylance, The Baltimore Sun | January 17, 2011
You probably have more computing power in your pocket than what NASA's venerable Voyager spacecraft are carrying to the edge of the solar system. They have working memories a million times smaller than your home computer. They record their scientific data on 8-track tape machines. And they communicate with their aging human inventors back home with a 23-watt whisper. Even so, the twin explorers, now 33 years into their mission, continue to explore new territory as far as 11 billion miles from Earth.