NASA NEWS

Since 1977 Voyager 1 and 1980 Voyager 2 the two U. S. spacecrafts have been rushing away from the sun at 35,000 and 39,000 MPH respectively and are about 8,000,000,000 miles distant approaching the heliosheath where the solar winds abruptly slow - it is the edge of our solar system. Voyager 1 and 2 on divergent courses seems to have found the solar system isn’t symetrically round but dented.

Leonard Burlaga, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s literally like a hand pushing.” That push is from the magnetic field that lies between star systems in the Milky Way. The magnetic field hits the solar system at a different angle on the south than on the north, probably because of interstellar turbulence from star explosions, said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone. Both spacecraft still have several more years before they completely exit the solar system and continue deeper into the vast space between our Sun and the nearest stars, said Stone, former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Voyager 1, in 40,000 years, will float by within 1.6 light years (9.3 trillion miles) of a star known as AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. Voyager 2, in 296,000 years, will sail within 4.3 light years (25 trillion miles) of Sirius, which today is the brightest star in Earth’s sky.

Both are destined to wander the universe for eternity or until they crash into something. Should they be discovered each carries a gold plated disk described where they came from and the sort of beings who sent them. They are already the most distant manmade objects ever to leave the Earth. Both have radioisotope electric generators making it possible for them to continue sending radio signals back to us. They are so far away it takes radio wave traveling at 186,000 MPH (the speed of light) almost half a day to arrive.

NASA has 10 missions remaining for the shuttle fleet, and has announced the final flight will be May 31, 2010. Once the shuttles retire, work will focus on the Ares rocket and Orion capsule that will be used to return astronauts to the moon. Enterprise, the first space shuttle, rolled out of Rockwell’s facility in the Mohave desert on Sept. 17, 1976 but was not space capable but only for research. Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour have been built for space flights. Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch in 1986, and Endeavour was built as a replacement. Columbia broke apart during re-entry in 2003.

China is planning a manned Moon landing in 2020, and NASA is planning its next visit in 2018. The INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION will be complete and interest will turn to a permanent international base on the moon.