What is the Heliopause?

As the first man made object crosses out into interstellar space there has been a lot of noise made by scientists and researchers the world over about its crossing the heliopause. The heliopause is the boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space. Now we need to define the heliosphere and interstellar space.

The heliosphere happens to be the solar bubble, which is inflated by plasma that streams outward from our sun, Sol. This tends to extend far beyond the farther most planets of the solar system. For the last few years the Voyager I has been traveling through this and it was finally cleared in mid September 2013.

As the word suggests interstellar space is essentially the space between the stars. One team member of the Voyager I mission said that traveling to interstellar space is at present like traveling to a new location with an incomplete guide book. While there are many theories about what scientists expect to find in interstellar space, there is as yet little known about it.

As the Voyager I travels onwards away from the sun, it will provide the scientists back home with invaluable data on interstellar space. So when the next science project launches a space craft to travel out of the solar system, we will know a whole lot more than we do today.