The Voyager 1 space probe has become the first human made object to leave the Solar System and is now travelling through interstellar space, according to new research.
The spacecraft, one of two identical probes launched in 1977, is now 18.8 billion kilometres (125 AU) from our Sun. A team of scientists led by Don Gurnett and the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa have been studying data from Voyager 1 and calculated that the probe's first encounter with interstellar space was in August 2012.
Since then the probe has been travelling through the ionised gas that exists between the stars.
"Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap into interstellar space," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "The Voyager team needed time to analyse those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are."
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-09/13/voyager-1-leaves-solar-system
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