AlQa'dah 6, 1434, Sep 12, 2013, SPA -- For the first time in history, a human-made object has left our solar system, scientists said Thursday. NASA's decades-old Voyager 1 craft likely exited the solar system and entered interstellar space on August 25, 2012, according to an analysis of data sent back to Earth and published in the journal Science. "Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is humankind's historic leap into interstellar space," said scientist Ed Stone, who has worked on the project and is based at the California Institute of Technology. "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking: 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are. " The actual edge of the solar system is not clearly defined. Scientists have been waiting for years for a signal from Voyager 1announcing that it had left the solar system and reached interstellar space as it explored the boundary region known as the heliosphere. Scientists have deduced several times that the craft had reached, or was about to reach, the solar system's edge, but NASA had yet to confirm the findings. The Voyager team needed time to analyze fresh data and reach a conclusion about Voyager's location. Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, and is the furthest manmade object from Earth. Voyager 1 and its sister craft Voyager 2 have both been bound for the solar system's edge. The Voyager craft have surpassed the distance from the sun reached by Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which were launched earlier, but were moving at a slower speed and have since lost contact with Earth. Voyager 1 visited Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980, sending back the first detailed images of their moons, and, along with sister craft Voyager 2, took images of all the outer planets. In 1990, Voyager took the first complete photo of the solar system. It has spent recent years studying the heliosheath, which surrounds the outer edge of the solar system, where the sun's influence wanes.
