As of April 13, 2012, Voyager 2 was 9.127 billion miles from Earth, beyond the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 2 is leaving the solar system at 36,000 miles per hour, or 1 light year per 18,600 years. So reports the MIT Space Plasma Group.
NASA
MIT will be among the institutions celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Voyager mission this week. The ship’s Plasma Science Experiment (PSE) is the work of the MIT group. Thirty-five years ago they put two instruments on Voyager 12 –“Plasma” or “Faraday” Cups. They’ve been collecting data on solar wind speed, density, temperature, and pressure ever since. According to the MIT Museum, the cups have sent data back every 160 seconds of its “Grand Tour” of the planets and beyond. They now post the data on the MIT web site; last year, the team published 8 papers
The site includes an animation of the spherical bubble created by solar wind called the heliosphere, that continually expands over the lifetime of the solar system. The MIT website also describes 1970s era time capsule that went into the ships — a phonograph record with music and images.”selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.” Continue reading