After 41 Years, NASA's Voyager 2 Has Finally Left Our Solar System And We Should All Be Proud

Space truly is the final frontier, and humanity won't stop until we've explored all of it.

Which is why today we've covered another milestone in that journey, with only the second man-made object ever to leave our Solar System and enter into interstellar space.

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Earlier today, NASA announced that the Voyager 2 spacecraft has passed into a region of space where it's being pelted with particles from outside our Solar System. That means it's officially gone beyond the heliosphere, the bubble around our sun composed of magnetic fields and plasma, and into deep space.

"For me this is an extremely exciting time for the history of space exploration," NASA astrophysicist Georgia Denolfo said in a press conference today. "We're able to look at the galaxy through the clouded lens of our heliosphere, and now we can take a step outside with Voyager."

Within the heliosphere, solar wind is the strongest source of particles, whereas cosmic rays take over outside that bubble. This line of control is called the heliopause, and the Voyager 2 passed it on November 5, of which we just received confirmation from the craft.

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It follows in the footsteps of the Voyager 1, which was the first ever object of human design to cross the heliopause in 2012. Oddly enough though, both craft were launched in 1977, and Voyager 2 was in fact blasted into space 16 days before its partner. They were named as they are because scientists had launched Voyager 1 on a shorter path and they knew it would emerge first. Voyager 2 instead took a longer route and became the first spacecraft to ever visit Uranus and Neptune.

Voyager 2 is also NASA's longest-running mission, having been active for 41 years, 3 months and 20 days as of today.

"I think we're all happy and relieved that the Voyager probes have both operated long enough to make it past this milestone," said Suzanne Dodd, NASA's project manager for the Voyager program. "This is what we've all been waiting for. Now we're looking forward to what we'll be able to learn from having both probes outside the heliopause."

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Aside from the expected instruments on board though, the Voyager 2 also has another special cargo. Like its counterpart, it carries a 'Golden Record', a gold-plated audio-visual disc. This is a data storage module that houses photos of Earth and its lifeforms, varied scientific data, spoken greetings in various languages and a vast mixture of "Sounds of Earth", including audio of a baby crying, whales, waves on the shore, and music from throughout the ages. It's meant to be a quick primer on the off-chance the Voyager 1 or 2 are discovered by aliens, so they have an idea of what to expect. Or at least what they could have expected till 1977.

There's still a long way however, considering there are light years between the Voyagers and even the nearest stars. That could take hundreds of years. In the meantime, NASA is just doing what it can to get the spacecraft to last 50 years.