Eventually, after a decade or so, it should cross the heliopause and venture into interstellar space.
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In the zero-gravity void of interstellar space, the crafts might survive indefinitely, traveling the universe for all eternity.
Predicting the location of the termination shock was hard, the researchers say, because the precise conditions in interstellar space are unknown.
Today, it is barreling into interstellar space some 14 billion kilometers from Earth and has only burned through about half of its fuel supply.
It made a faint whine as it pulled away, delivering power so smoothly that it might as well have been gliding through interstellar space.
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The Voyager project scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ed Stone, said he wanted to see a reorientation of the magnetic fields around the probe before declaring it to be in interstellar space.
Nasa funded the study but said any assessment that Voyager might be in interstellar space did not reflect the view of everyone working on the project, and Prof Weber acknowledges there is an ongoing debate about the probe's status.
It has been detecting a rise in the number of high-energy particles, or cosmic rays, coming towards it from interstellar space, while at the same time recording a decline in the intensity of energetic particles coming from behind, from our Sun.
It would be an understatement to say there's been a long build-up to the moment when Voyager 1 ventures into interstellar space: scientists thought the probe was on the edge back in 2010, and we've been waiting for the official milestone ever since.
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To get a read on the true nature of the pristine Interstellar Medium (ISM) the space between the stars, we need a dedicated Interstellar Precursor Mission.
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