NASA is now planning a mission to journey 1,000 AU from the solar deep into interstellar house

A different perspective can work wonders. Perceiving things from a different angle can enable people, both metaphorically and literally, to see things differently. And in space there is an almost infinite number of angles from which objects can be observed. Like all perspectives, some are more informative than others. Sometimes these informative perspectives are also the most difficult to achieve.

Voyager’s two probes did an excellent job providing humanity with access to some difficult new perspectives simply because of their distance from Earth. Now a team of over 500 scientists and volunteers are calling on NASA to go even further to find a better perspective by sending a satellite 1000 times the distance from the sun to earth – almost ten times as far as that Have traveled Voyager for over 35 years.

The project, currently known as the “Interstellar Probe”, is being led by Dr. Elena Provornikova from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physical Lab. She leads a team of over 500 people to define the goals of such an ambitious mission.

Infographic with the type of distances that the interstellar probe will scale.
Photo credit: Johns Hopkins APL

Some of the primary science will no doubt focus on the heliosphere, the environment around our star that is exposed to the solar wind. Voyager found the edge, but its instruments weren’t designed to investigate the phenomena, so it left many unanswered questions. The new mission would try to pick up where they left off.

One of those unanswered questions is how exactly interstellar gas interacts with the sun’s plasma. This is the current theory of the formation of the heliosphere. Additional information about the heliosphere the team is looking to collect includes what exactly the heliosphere itself looks like and how it is affected as the sun moves through the galaxy.

SciShow Space episode on the edge of the solar system.
Photo credit: SciShow Space YouTube Channel

However, studying the heliosphere will not be the only objective of the mission. From planetary research to observing the extragalactic backlight, everything is on the menu to potentially be included on the mission. Part of the interstellar probe’s selling point is the multitude of new observations it could make that have never been available before.

These sales arguments are contained in the “pragmatic concept study” that Dr. Provornikova and her team will graduate this year after four years of effort. Your final report will include proposed details of the mission, including scientific targets, instrument payloads, and potential flight paths.

TMRO video about the Interstellar Probe mission.
Photo credit: TMRO YouTube Channel

As with many proposed missions, there is still a long way to go before data is actually collected from a new perspective. Currently, the mission is expected to start in the 2030s and reach the target of 1,000 AU around 15 years later. Regardless of when it actually reaches its destination, with the right planning and resources, the interstellar probe will provide a whole new perspective for science.

Learn more:
EGU – Exploring space with Interstellar
APL – interstellar probe
Space.com – Journey To The Stars: NASA Study Mulls Options
UT – This is what the solar system really looks like

Mission statement:
Graphic to represent the interstellar probe
Photo credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

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