36 Years Ago today - The Grand Tour began

[PLATO]

36 years ago today Voyager II was launched on what was billed as a Grand Tour of the Outer Solar System.

Voyager II is over 15,000,000,000 km from the Sun and its twin Voyager I (launched second) is over 18,000,000,000 km from the sun.

Both have yet to leave the Solar System.

Will they mark the beginning of man's foray into deep space or will they be a historical anomaly?

[Sava]

Both have yet to leave the Solar System.

wrongo

According to the team, Voyager is in the interstellar arctic and traveling through the cosmic slush. They claim that their model accounts for the shift in charged particle counts and why the magnetic field in the vicinity of Voyager hasn't changed. By their reckoning, Voyager 1 left the Solar System on July 27, 2012.

In response to this claim, NASA's Voyager project scientist, Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena issued this statement:

"Details of a new model have just been published that lead the scientists who created the model to argue that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft data can be consistent with entering interstellar space in 2012. In describing on a fine scale how magnetic field lines from the sun and magnetic field lines from interstellar space can connect to each other, they conclude Voyager 1 has been detecting the interstellar magnetic field since July 27, 2012. Their model would mean that the interstellar magnetic field direction is the same as that which originates from our sun.

http://www.gizmag.com/voyager-1-magnetic-field-interstellar-space/28719/

[PLATO]

Very Interesting. I had always thought the interstellar magnetic field was at right angle to the solar magnetic field.

[The Mad Monk]

That quote...

[ZEE]

I liked the other thrade Better.

[self biased]

wrongo

[The Mad Monk]

Bingo.

[Elok]

Will they mark the beginning of man's foray into deep space or will they be a historical anomaly?

The second one. Or else option C: other countries will send off their own probes as they develop space flight, but none of them will come to anything.

[DaShi]

Bingo.

If only you had gotten here earlier.