What is the solar wind and what NASA's robotic Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 did

The Sun is always blasting out particles of itself. Called the solar wind. These speedy particles are charged with electricity. The solar wind blows throughout the solar system, out to way, way beyond the planets.

What is space weather? Sometimes the Sun gets even more active than usual and burps out a much bigger and faster-moving blast of charged particles.

If Earth happens to be in their path, these speedy particles can damage our satellites, our electrical grids, and maybe even hurt our astronauts. The solar wind slows down only when it meets up with something that pushes against it.

The solar wind blows inside a kind of a bubble in space. This bubble is called the heliosphere. Our solar system is all within this bubble. Just inside the wall of the bubble is where the solar wind slows down and then finally stops.

Outside the bubble are the winds that blow between the stars. This wind is called the interstellar wind.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2: These two robotic spacecraft, called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, left Earth way back in 1977. 

It took them around 35 years just to get out of our solar system. NASA's robotic Voyager 1 probe finally left the solar system in August 2012.

They reached what is called the termination shock, the place where the wind from our Sun meets the wind between the stars. The Voyagers are helping us understand the shape and size of our own star system’s bubble in space.

The Voyagers are the first human made objects traveling in interstellar space. 

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