NASA's Voyagers Instrumental To Studying Interstellar Space
The two Voyager space crafts that NASA launched back in 1977 on a long road-trip have gone through uncharted territory, wandering off from our solar system. Along the way, they are measuring the interstellar medium, that exists in space between various star systems.
As they sail into interstellar space, NASA's twin Voyager probes are entering a mysteriously complex realm. Information from the Hubble Space Telescope is illuminating what may lie in front of the probes, revealing rich clouds of hydrogen along their path, according to International Business Times.
The work is a rare marriage of two of the most famous space missions - and an unprecedented glimpse at the realm between the stars. Each voyager is traveling on a different angle away from the plane of the Solar System, and Hubble peered into space along their lines of sight. The telescope gathered information on the light coming from distant stars, far beyond where the space crafts currently lie.
Both Voyagers currently lie within the Local Interstellar Medium, a bubbly material spread inside the whole Solar System. Data compiled by Hubble telescope suggests that Voyager 2 will move out from this interstellar medium in several thousand years, entering another cloud beyond that one. However, it is still unclear when Voyager 1 is expected to break through the bubble.
Astronomers have used instruments similar to Hubble so as to obtain indirect measurements of material that inhabits interstellar space. But the two Voyagers probes provide scientists a live feed on what they're looking for. The mysterious realm that the two probes are flowing endlessly through, send back raw1 data regarding the electron density of their surroundings.
"As an astronomer, I'm not used to having measurements from the place I'm observing," says Seth Redfield, an astronomer at Wesleyan and a member of the team, according to the Nature Magazine. Voyager's direct, and Hubble's indirect, measurements of interstellar space will be important for planning true interstellar missions in the future.
