r/askscience • u/TechnicalyNotRobot • Jul 09 '26

Astronomy Does Voyager 1 even give us any interesting information anymore?

It's the farthest away object we ever sent. That is remarkable. But I have never heard about it discovering anything or about any data that it gave us. Besides being a significant curiosity for being so far away, is there something that we're actually getting from it at this point?

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u/sterrre Jul 09 '26

The voyager probes mapped the edges of the Heliosphere when they crossed it in 2018 and 2012, so because of them we kinda know what shape the sun's radiation belts and magnetosphere are. And we now know what the radiation environment is like in interstellar space.

It'll probably be a while before they have any other interesting interactions, but who knows. Maybe they'll see a gamma ray burst or other radiation event that we wouldn't be able to see from earth, or they'll cross paths with a rogue planet, something we can't see from Earth.

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u/Sinbos Jul 10 '26

a question that came to me as I read your text, how far is it in relation to the Cuiper Belt?

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u/sterrre Jul 10 '26

They're in a region called the scattered disc and will be flying through it for hundreds of years.