NASA's Voyager to prepare us for future deep space missions - Computerworld

News September 13, 2013 03:58 PM ET Computerworld - As NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft travels outside the solar system, scientists hope to learn about the forces pushing on the "bubble" around the sun and how interstellar radiation could affect future space exploration. "There's never been anything like this," said Ed Stone, chief scientist for the Voyager mission. "Nothing has ever been outside the solar bubble before. Nothing." NASA scientists confirmed that the Voyager 1 space probe has gone into the interstellar region beyond our solar system. (Image: NASA) Stone is hardly a newcomer to the Voyager mission. He was the chief scientist on the project during Voyager's planning stages in the early 1970s. Not only did Voyager 1 make history by becoming the first human-made spacecraft to journey beyond the solar system, but it did so on 36- to 40-year-old technology, Stone told Computerworld on Friday. "This was one of our long-range hopes," Stone said. "We had no way to know at the time that this was possible because we didn't know how far away the edge of the bubble was. When Voyager was launched, the space age was only 20 years old. Most things didn't even last a few years back then. We had no idea if Voyager could last for 36 years and go as far as it has." To put it in perspective, a smartphone today has 240,000 more memory than Voyager 1. That makes the Voyager 1 probe a testament to the power of engineering. "This whole mission has been a major part of my life," Stone said. "I've been so fortunate to be part of this historic journey. This is the first spacecraft to sail in the cosmic sea between the stars." The Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 with its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2 . On Thursday, NASA announced what had already been suspected -- that the spacecraft had left the solar system and had entered interstellar space in August 2012. The probe has journeyed between 14 billion and 15 billion miles. "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them," Stone said during a press conference Thursday. "But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are." Stone explained that it took scientists months to figure out whether Voyager 1 had left the solar system because the instrument that Voyager used to measures plasma, an ionic gas, stopped working in 1980. Plasma is different depending on whether it is inside or outside the heliosphere, which is like a bubble that surrounds the sun. Without that measurement tool, scientists had to analyze plasma waves, which was a more time-consuming process. via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGOOqGntu-pR2KtgwH13Uz7Bsi4Ig&url=http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242397/NASA_s_Voyager_to_prepare_us_for_future_deep_space_missions?taxonomyId=18

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