1. The Legendary Journey
- Voyager 2, launched in 1977, has traveled over 12 billion miles (20 billion km) from Earth.
- It’s the only spacecraft to visit all four giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
- In 2018, it crossed the heliopause — the invisible boundary where the Sun’s influence ends, and interstellar space begins.
2. The “Impossible” Encounter
Recently, Voyager 2’s instruments picked up data that stunned scientists:
- Cosmic Rays Surge: Radiation levels outside the heliosphere were far stronger than expected.
- Plasma Waves Detected: Voyager 2 “heard” low-frequency plasma vibrations from the interstellar medium, something long thought impossible at such faint levels.
- Magnetic Field Anomaly: Instead of dispersing smoothly, the interstellar magnetic field bent sharply at the heliopause, almost as if Voyager had hit a “wall.”
