Voyager 1 detects energy signals of stars beyond our solar system

As Nasa's Voyager 1 spacecraft continues to explore the very outer shell of our solar system, the deep-space explorer has found the intensity of charged particles from interstellar space has dramatically increased.

Voyager 1 (and its cousin Voyager 2) was launched in 1977. It explored the planets for several years, and was then sent towards the edge of the solar system with the dream of being the first human-made object to explore interstellar space.

Now some 17 billion kilometres from Earth, Voyager has plunged into the heliosheath and seen the solar winds from the Sun drop to zero. Since 7 May 2012, the spacecraft's two High Energy telescopes detected that cosmic ray hits increased five percent in a week and nine percent in a month.

Those energetic particles were generated when stars in our galaxy went supernova.

"The latest data indicates that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system's frontier," explains Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology.

Someday, Voyager will break through -- "but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be," says Stone.

So how will astronomers like Stone know when Voyager has finally broken through to the other side? Well, it will see a precipitous drop in the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the heliosphere -- that bubble of charged particles around the sun.

Voyager will also see a major shift in the direction of the magnetic field lines surrounding the spacecraft. While Voyager is still within the heliosphere, these field lines run east-west -- Nasa scientists expect that those field lines will orient in a north-south direction in interstellar space.

The nuclear-powered Voyager still has plenty of life left in it yet. It will gradually shut down specific capabilities from 2015, to save power, but it will still be able to power some instruments up until about 2030.

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