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Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU

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Low-energy particles of solar origin fell away and galactic cosmic rays rose sharply, indicating that the spacecraft had passed out of the solar wind and into interstellar plasma. The interpretation was contested at the time because the magnetic field direction did not turn as models had predicted it would at the boundary, and the spacecraft had no working plasma instrument to settle the question directly.

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Evidence · 1
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 3
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 52 blocks · 1 evidence · 65 related

  1. Story
  2. Low-energy particles of solar origin fell away and galactic cosmic rays rose sharply, indicating that the spacecraft had passed out of the solar wind and into interstellar plasma. The interpretation was contested at the time because the magnetic field direction did not turn as models had predicted it would at the boundary, and the spacecraft had no working plasma instrument to settle the question directly.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Voyager 1
  5. Heliopause
  6. Very local interstellar medium
  7. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
  8. Connections
  9. Heliopause
  10. Voyager 1
  11. Very local interstellar medium
  12. Very local interstellar medium
  13. Heliosphere
  14. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
  15. The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
  16. Voyager 2 crosses the heliopause at 119 AU
  17. The Grand Tour alignment
  18. Voyager 2
  19. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
  20. Titan
  21. NASA Deep Space Network
  22. Gravity assist
  23. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  24. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
  25. Jupiter
  26. Saturn
  27. Titan
  28. Voyager high-gain antenna
  29. Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
  30. Titan IIIE-Centaur
  31. Edward C. Stone
  32. The Voyager Golden Record
  33. Carl Sagan
  34. Pale Blue Dot
  35. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
  36. Voyager 1 launches
  37. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
  38. Active volcanism found on Io
  39. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
  40. Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
  41. Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
  42. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
  43. The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
  44. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
  45. Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
  46. Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth
  47. Heliosphere
  48. Heliopause
  49. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
  50. Voyager 2 crosses the heliopause at 119 AU
  51. Evidence
  52. Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument recorded electron plasma oscillations near 2.6 kHz in October–November 2012 and April–May 2013, implying an electron density of about 0.08 cm⁻³ and indicating that the spacecraft had been in interstellar plasma continuously since the boundary crossings of July–August 2012, dated 25 August 2012 at 121.6 AU. V55 verification basis: the paper is on a publisher domain blocked to this session, but search results carried the frequency, the density and the crossing date and distance and attributed them to this paper.
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