I had the honor and pleasure to take a class from the venerable professor, JPL director, and Voyager project scientist Ed Stone at Caltech in 2018. He excitedly told us a "secret" on November 1st that Voyager 2 had reached interstellar space, and he showed us the actual data proving it. But we had to keep it a secret until the press release that Monday, November 5. It was a special moment to see his passion for the project almost 50 years in, and felt incredibly special to hear it directly from him. RIP professor.

▲

avian 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not to detract from the amazing success that is Voyager - I also still remember attending a lecture given by a JPL engineer that worked on one of the instruments - but I feel like the "Voyager has reached interstellar space" thing has been milked to death by PR. There was a period where I feel like there was one such announcement published in media each month with very unsatisfactory explanation (if any) how it differs from the last one.

	▲	avian 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Because this is getting downvoted, and to check if my memory serves me well: Here's an excerpt from a 2013 article in Scientific American that appears on the first page of results when searching for "voyager left the solar system" [1]: > Voyager 1 was starting to get a reputation as the spacecraft that cried wolf, after scientists repeatedly claimed it was leaving the solar system, only to change their minds and say it wasn’t quite there yet. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/voyager-1-leaves-...

▲

qweqweqwe1 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]