November is Native American Heritage Month

Voyager Approaching Solar System's Final Frontier

Artist image of Voyager spacecraft

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is about to make history again. It is the first spacecraft to enter the solar system's final frontier, a vast expanse where wind from the sun blows hot against thin gas between the stars: interstellar space.

However, before it reaches this region, Voyager 1 must pass through the termination shock, a violent zone that is the source of beams of high-energy particles. Voyager's journey through this turbulent zone will give scientists the first direct measurements of our solar system's unexplored final frontier, the heliosheath. Scientists are debating if this passage has already begun. Two papers about this research are being published in Nature today.

The first paper, by Dr. Stamatios Krimigis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., and his team, supports the claim Voyager 1 passed beyond the termination shock. The second paper, by Dr. Frank McDonald of the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., and his team, disputes the claim. A third paper, published October 30 in Geophysical Research Letters by GSFC's Dr. Leonard Burlaga and collaborators, states Voyager 1 did not pass beyond the termination shock.

For more on Voyager reaching the solar system, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-
release/releases/2003/03-354.htm

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NASA 's Mission:
*To understand and protect our home planet
*To explore the Universe and search for life
*To inspire the next generation of explorers
…as only NASA can

For a further details of the NASA mission, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/bios/vision.html

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In observance and in celebration marking a century of flight in 2003, Goddard News features a historical NASA flight tidbits. This Month in History: On November 7, 1958 NASA research pilot John McKay made the last flight in the X-1E, the final model flown of the X-1 series. The various models of the X-1, together with the D-558-I and -II, the X-2 - X-5 and XF-92A provided data to correlate test results from the slotted throat wind tunnel at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA's Langley Research Center) with actual flight values. Together, results of flight research and wind tunnel testing enabled the U.S. aeronautical community to solve many of the problems that occur in the transonic speed range (0.7 to 1.3 times the speed of sound).

Visit the NASA Glenn Centennial Website at: http://centennial.grc.nasa.gov for information about the Inventing Flight celebration. For more information on the Centennial of Flight celebration events, go to: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/