Pale Blue Dot 2: Voyager 1 Signal from Interstellar Space Seen from Earth (Photo)

by Megan Gannon, News Editor   |   September 14, 2013 10:30am ET

594

 

180

 

29

Share

25

 

The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a network of radio telescopes operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, spotted the signal of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft from 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers) away. The image was taken on Feb. 21, 2013. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF View full size image

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft nearly 12 billion miles from Earth is still phoning home from interstellar space, and a new NASA photo captures that radio signal as pale blue speck in a cosmic ocean.
The space agency unveiled the amazing image Voyager 1's radio signal glow as seen by an array of radio telescopes on Earth earliier this week to celebrate Voyager 1's arrival in its new interstellar frontier.

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft entering interstellar space, or the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago. The environment inside our solar bubble is dominated by the plasma exhausted by our sun, known as the solar wind. The interstellar plasma is shown with an orange glow similar to the color seen in visible-light images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope that show stars in the Orion nebula traveling through interstellar space. Image released Sept. 12, 2013.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

View full size image

Researchers confirmed Thursday (Sept. 12) that Voyager 1 is officially in interstellar space. The spacecraft, which launched in 1977, became the first ever human-made object to leave our cosmic neighborhood and enter the space between stars. It likely did so on or around Aug. 25, 2012. [Voyager 1 in Interstellar Space: Complete Coverage]

Scientists can't "see" our first interstellar ambassador in the visible spectrum, but they can detect Voyager 1's signal in radio light.
The 36-year-old spacecraft's communications technology is lacking by today's standards. A smartphone has thousands of times more memory than Voyager 1 and the space probe's main transmitter radiates just 22 watts, about the same amount of power as a typical ham radio or a refrigerator light bulb, NASA said. But compared to many natural objects probed by radio telescopes, Voyager 1's signal is actually quite bright.

On Feb. 21, 2013, researchers tried to glimpse the spacecraft's radio signal using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a network of powerful radio telescopes spanning from Hawaii to St. Croix.
"They were able to see a blue speck," Suzanne Dodd, Voyager's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said during a news conference Thursday. "And this image represents the Voyager radio signal as seen by the