Its' a fantastic achievement for JPL and Ed Stone's team and it's a major event in human history.

 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/voyager-boldly-goes-beyond-our-stars/story-e6frg8y6-1226718163032

It is, but sadly people are still tweeting about stuff like Miley Cyrus and the VMA awards.

 

I read the article on CNN this morning which was absolutely fascinating, but wasn't generating a lot of discussion.

However, the picture of the frog launched during the recent NASA launch for the moon mission was generating a lot more interest....

 

Sigh. :(

I thought that Voyager left the solar system a long time ago.

Depends on how you define the boundary of the solar system and whether reanalysis or new data show that a previous conclusion was wrong.

This comic sums it up nicely (be sure to hold your mouse cursor over the comic and read the caption).

http://xkcd.com/1189/

Some other Voyager tidbits (From the JPL website):

"... The Voyager spacecraft can point its scientific instruments on the scan platform to an accuracy of better than one-tenth of a degree. This is comparable to bowling strike-after-strike ad infinitum, assuming that you must hit within one inch of the strike pocket every time. Such precision is necessary to properly center the narrow-angle picture whose square field-of-view would be equivalent to the width of a bowling pin."

 

"... The sensitivity of our deep-space tracking antennas located around the world [The Deep Space Network] is truly amazing. The antennas must capture Voyager information from a signal so weak that the power striking the antenna is only 10 exponent -16 watts (1 part in 10 quadrillion). A modern-day electronic digital watch operates at a power level 20 billion times greater than this feeble level."

"... The Voyager delivery accuracy at Neptune of 100 km (62 mi), divided by the trip distance or arc length traveled of 7,128,603,456 km (4,429,508,700 mi), is equivalent to the feat of sinking a 3630 km (2260 mi) golf putt, assuming that the golfer can make a few illegal fine adjustments while the ball is rolling across this incredibly long green."

 

Not bad for a spacecraft using only 400 watts!

 

I love reading about the Voyager spacecraft. It is amazing what was designed with just slide rules and paper. I wish they had new probes being sent out.

W-w-what if the folks from ViperPilot's signature get in contact with the probe? I mean it carries the map to Earth. Just sayin'. :Alien: