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International Space Station, Russia Still Saying Goodbye After 2024. NASA: ‘No Official Communication’
He said, “The only way to see what our aquarium looks like is to stand outside and look in.” Ralph McNutt who worked on the plasma probe for the Voyager mission, NASA’s epic mission to the outer planets Launched in 1977. Now, McNutt must convince a jury of his colleagues to get the funding needed to begin the work . His team presented an interstellar probe concept study for the Decadal Survey of Solar and Space Physics, a community exercise led by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that will prioritize the field over the next 10 years. The panel is expected to begin deliberations next month and issue its verdict in 2024. The admiration for intellectual property would go a long way in securing NASA’s support for a probe that would ideally lift off in 2036. See also
The Sun as We’ve Never Seen It Before: Close-Up Images Taken by the Solar Orbiter
In 2007, Voyager 2 made a big surprise when it dipped below the plane of the ecliptic, the plane in which the planets of the solar system orbit. go through what’s called a Termination Shock’, where the solar wind begins to falter when it’s hit by gas and interstellar dust that the solar system passes through on its journey through the galaxy. Voyager 1 went through a “termination shock” 3 years ago, about 94 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, where there is 1 AU The average distance between Earth and the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers. However, its plasma detector failed in 1980 during its visit to Saturn, so it could not measure the slowing of the solar wind. The models expected wind speeds to slow from 1.2 million kilometers per hour to about 300,000 kilometers per hour, but Voyager 2 recorded wind speeds of 540 thousand kilometers per hour. A symbol of how little has been explored and understood about space outside the solar system. Chinese scientists are planning a similar mission called Interstellar Express, which may launch around the same time. “buckle up,” urged Jim Bell, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, Tempe, and past president of the Planetary Society. “It’s a space race to the edge of the solar system!” Alessandro Berlingeri