One year ago today, Voyager 2 became the second spacecraft to leave the heliosphere. When Voyager 2 entered interstellar space, data collected from sensors was sent to scientists to help visualize what this event was like. According to data from Voyager and Voyager 2, some light has been shed on what interstellar space is like, and how it differs from our heliosphere.
This discovery was the result of thousands of man hours of work, and the 41 years it took for Voyager 2 to reach the end of our heliosphere. The team behind Voyager 2 had to design everything to last as long as possible in space. Considering that we had a very limited knowledge of space in 1977, let alone interstellar space- it is very impressive that is still functional.
This new knowledge will be very useful for us in years to come, especially due to our renewed interest in space exploration. We can use this newfound information to help us design spacecraft that can endure the harshness of interstellar space.
This breakthrough relates to my group's effort in our JPL project. Just like the design of Voyager 2, my team's project has been very over engineered. Overall, our project is going very well, we are well ahead of schedule, and we are using the remaining time to tune our device to be as accurate and consistent as possible. The Voyager 2 teams undoubtedly spent countless hours making ironing out flaws in the design.
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