The Voyager 2 spacecraft has sent back its first message from interstellar space, after having left our solar system late last year. This makes it only the second human-made object to ever reach beyond this point, following sibling Voyager 1, which crossed this threshold in 2012.
Launched on August 20, 1977, Voyager is the longest-running space mission in history, lasting in excess of 40 years and counting. It crossed over into the interstellar medium (ISM) on November 5, 2018, journeying more than 11 billion miles from the sun. However, it has taken until now for the first data sent back to be published. This Voyager 2 data sheds new light on the structure of the heliosphere, the edge of our solar system. The data provides valuable information about the bubble-like heliosphere, which is created by wind streaming out from the sun. Voyager 2 is so far away from Earth that it takes the information 19 hours to travel from the spacecraft back to Earth.