Five Million Miles From Pluto

[Da_Vinci]

@mtadao

Voyager 1 is far far away and continues to send info back to earth. If it does not collide with anything on its path, it will take 300years to reach the Oort cloud (this is where comets originate), take 30000years to pass through and will only be 12light years from Gliese the nearest star.

Gliese is the nearest star from what? I thought the nearest star to our Solar System is Alpha Centauri, which is only four light years away!

[Ingia]

@Bhangi Iwe Huru

New Horizons will keep going into the Kuiper Belt. Scientists are hoping that it may encounter objects in the Kuiper belt on it’s trajectory since it cannot be maneuvered. If it survives the Kuiper belt it will keep going and explore what’s called the outer heliosphere and the heliopause. The heliopause is the region where solar wind is no longer strong enough to have any effect on the surrounding interstellar medium. New Horizons if it makes it will be the third man-made object to reach that far after voyager I and II launched in 1997.

voyager I and II august and sep 1977. Still operational and voyager I into interstellar space last time I heard.

[Mathaais]

Latest image of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft courtesy of NASA [ATTACH=full]9263[/ATTACH]

[Mathaais]

Someone posted that the spacecraft is currently on safe mode and no longer transmitting data back to Earth. I guess that wasn’t entirely correct.

[anonymous60]

@Mathice

Someone posted that the spacecraft is currently on safe mode and no longer transmitting data back to Earth. I guess that wasn’t entirely correct.

it was but now its systems back and running