Examining the Space Effect Through the Interstellar Spacecraft

Spacecraft have entered Interstellar space long back, and it was a proliferation of the attempts made by the scientists. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 Spacecraft have already suffered the plight and yet they found their way into space in 2012 and 2018 respectively. The plucky spacecraft had traversed 120 times the distance from the Earth to the sun to arrive at the borderline of the heliosphere.

The Voyagers discovered the edge of the bubble but left scientists in serious doubts as to how the sun interacts with the local Interstellar medium. Although the research appeared to be comprehensive, it still hindered as it provided limited data, and left critical gaps in our understanding of the region. The hindsight of the NASA astronomers resort to have a better conclusion theory, and that’s why they are aiming a launch for the next spacecraft. The spacecraft would be probed by the name Interstellar Probe, and it will travel much deeper into the Interstellar space.

“The Interstellar Probe will go to the unknown local Interstellar space, where humanity has never reached before,” says Elena Provornikova, the Interstellar Probe heliophysics lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Maryland. For the first time, we will take a picture of our vast heliosphere from the exterior angles to observe what our solar system home presents. Along with that, the scope of heliophysics has been growing over some years, and the same will get addressed at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2021.

The APL-led team includes a bunch of 500 scientists, engineers and enthusiasts, who have been studying the type of investigation the mission should plan for. The problems that the group will look to evade while being on the mission include: how the sun’s plasma interacts with Interstellar gas to create our heliosphere; what lies beyond our heliosphere; and what our heliosphere even looks like.