Voyager I reaches edge of solar wind

LobsterMitten — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:09 -0800

The Voyager I spacecraft, 33 years into its mission, "has outrun the solar wind" and is exiting the solar system. This nice article explains what this means, and has a bunch of wonderful details and interviews with the original mission scientists. The announcement about the solar wind was made a month or so ago, and the "exiting" is taking place over a few years, so it's not like a "mark this date in your calendar" scenario. I'm posting it mainly because I really enjoyed this particular article on it. The article is by Frank Roylance of the Baltimore Sun, and it gave me the good old sense of wonder.

Venus's Missing Water

homunculus — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:26:07 -0800

Where did Venus’s water go? Water may have once been as abundant on Venus as it is on Earth. New data from the Venus Express suggests that the planet's lack of a magnetic field has allowed water in the atmosphere to be stripped apart and carried into space by the solar wind.

MetaFilter posts tagged with solarwind

Voyager I reaches edge of solar wind

Venus's Missing Water