spacetoday.net: Voyager scientists dispute claim spacecraft has left solar system

Posted: Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 6:28 AM ET (1028 GMT)
Voyager illustration (NASA/JPL)

The project scientist of NASA's Voyager spacecraft said Wednesday he disagreed with a claim in a newly-published paper that the Voyager 1 spacecraft had left the solar system. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) issued a press release Wednesday stating that a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters concluded Voyager 1 had left the solar system, based on a sudden increase in cosmic ray intensity consistent with the spacecraft passing through the heliopause. However, JPL released a statement later in the day from Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, who said it was "the consensus of the Voyager science team" that Voyager 1 was not yet in interstellar space, based on magnetic field data. The AGU revised their press release later in the day, saying instead that Voyager 1 had entered a new region of space rather than leaving the solar system.