The instrument giving NASA its clearest listen into interstellar space wasn’t built for that job at all — it was designed to study radio bursts during Voyager 1’s 1980 flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, and left switched on afterward almost as an afterthought, right before the instrument actually meant to measure interstellar gas failed for good
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Machine-written summary, checked against the sources below
An instrument built to study radio bursts during Voyager 1's 1980 flybys of Jupiter and Saturn was left running afterward, and it has since become the spacecraft's working sense at the edge of the solar system. The instrument meant to measure interstellar gas failed for good, leaving this one to pick up the crossing by accident.
A half-century-old instrument designed for Jupiter flybys is now humanity's only working sense at the edge of the solar system—and it picked up the crossing by accident. The post The instrument giving NASA its clearest listen into interstellar space wasn’t built for that job at all — it was designed to study radio bursts during Voyager 1’s 1980 flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, and left switched on afterward almost as an afterthought, right before the instrument actually meant to measure interstellar gas failed for good appeared first on Space Daily .
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