Cosmic Ray Electrons Seen by Voyager
Cosmic ray electrons seen by the Voyager spacecraft continue a chain of discoveries, as the spacecraft explore the frontier of interstellar space.
Just beyond the reach of charged particles from our Sun (which is, in some ways, the edge of our solar system), the Voyager spacecraft have witnessed a previously-unseen phenomenon for the first time.
The pair of Voyager spacecraft, launched from Earth in 1977, are now in the shallows of interplanetary space. Despite being launched four decades ago, this pair of robotic explorers is still making new discoveries, as they traipse through uncharted territory.
“The Voyager 1 (V1) and Voyager 2 (V2) spacecraft were launched in 1977 on a mission to explore the outer planets and reach the heliopause, the boundary between the hot solar plasma and the relatively cool interstellar plasma… One of their remarkable discoveries was the detection of shocks propagating into the interstellar plasma from energetic solar events,” researchers wrote in an article, published in The Astronomical Journal.
