10.5 day old moon
81.1 percent lit
Speaking of interstellar space, how about a refresher on what Earth has sent in the direction of no man's land.
December 1, 2017
By Mike Wall
...As Barber's words suggest, (click here) the mission team didn’t do this out of idle curiosity. Voyager 1 — which in August 2012 became the first human-made object ever to enter interstellar space — has long been using its standard attitude-control thrusters to orient itself into the proper position to communicate with Earth. But the performance of these thrusters has been flagging for at least three years, so mission team members wanted to find an alternative option....
Now, Voyager 1's sibling is leaving home, too.
Just as a point of interest, the interstellar object that passed through our solar system last year has an uncanny resemblance to the foreign probe in Star Trek 4, The Voyage Home (click here) about the whales. Just sayin'.
November 15, 2018
By Meghan Bartels
Going, going (click here) — nope, it's still just going, NASA says of its Voyager 2 probe, which the agency realized was approaching the edge of the solar system back in early October.
In a statement released yesterday (Nov. 14), NASA shared additional data from the probe that gives engineers a sense of where the spacecraft currently is in relation to the solar system.
The Voyager 2 probe, which launched in 1977, swung past the gas giants of our solar system, making this spacecraft the only device to gather detailed data about Uranus and Neptune. Then, its mission complete, Voyager 2 barrelled on, out toward the edge of our solar system....
