If you want to feel small, just imagine moving at 34,000 miles per hour for 40 years and getting – astronomically speaking- nowhere.
Late last year, the Voyager 2 space probe became the second craft to ever leave our solar system. Now 11 billion miles from Earth, it is one of the farthest-flung man-made objects in existence. And it was launched in 1977.
Because there are different ways of defining the solar system, we should be precise. The American Geophysical Union in Washington reports that Voyager 2’s sensors recently detected a sudden dip in radiation and magnetism, which marks the boundary of what astronomers call the “heliosphere,” our sun’s protective bubble of particles and magnetism.
In other words, the probe is now beyond our star’s most significant influences and is hurtling into interstellar space – literally “the space between the stars” – at 34,000 miles per hour.
Its departure from the heliosphere is big news because, unlike its twin, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 is still transmitting data back to us here on Earth, providing “first-of-its-kind” observations of the nature of this unexplored space.