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NASA's Voyager 2 Becomes 2nd Man-Made Object to Reach Interstellar Space

Both Voyager probes are still considered to be in the solar system, which is demarcated as the outer edge of the Oort Cloud

NASA announced on Monday that the Voyager 2 probe has reached interstellar space, making it the second man-made object to do so, NBC News reported.

Voyager 2 launched a couple weeks before Voyager 1 but its trajectory took it on a longer route through the solar system. NASA said the probe crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere — called the heliopause — on Nov. 5 and was 11 billion miles from Earth.

"Working on Voyager makes me feel like an explorer, because everything we're seeing is new," said John Richardson, principal investigator for the probe's "Plasma Science Instrument."

Both Voyager probes are still considered to be in the solar system, which is demarcated as the outer edge of the Oort Cloud.

voyager-2-nasa
NASA

CORRECTION (Dec. 10, 2018, 11:31 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the progress of the Voyager 2 probe. It has not left the solar system, though it has entered interstellar space.

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