5 September passed exactly 35 years since the launch of the spacecraft Voyager-1". Today tireless space wanderer has already reached the edge of the Solar system. Will he be able to break out of it? Maybe it will happen until 2025. However, Voyager" already gave the researchers a lot of surprises, which they previously did not know.

Eight years ago scientists found signs that Voyager" included in what is called the heliopause. But to leave the Solar system was not so easy. So, Robert Decker and his colleagues at the applied physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (USA) discovered at the turn our system "dead zone", in which the mean velocity of the particles of the solar matter falls almost to zero.

Such a situation was observed when the probe is at a distance of about 18.2 billion miles from the star, while Voyager-2", which is about 3 billion miles closer to the Sun than it ' twin"nothing like not recorded.

Decker and his group came to the conclusion that such reduced rate of solar particles points to approach the heliopause is the area where these particles collide with powerful winds emitted from a supernova that exploded 10 million years ago. As a result of such collision of particles are deflected to the side.

To test this hypothesis, engineers specially seven times covered Voyager" on one side, so that his equipment has registered the speed of particles along a line perpendicular to the course of the probe. It was a rather difficult task, given that data from the satellite are going to Land 17 hours, and the power of the transmitter is only 23 watt... However, the result was achieved: were able to determine that the velocity of the particles was zero, that is, they virtually remained in place, not interacting with stellar winds. Therefore, before the heliopause apparatus have not reached yet.

As a fall in the velocity of the solar particles were first recorded in 2010, we can assume that on the eve of the heliopause is "dead zone" - its "thickness" is estimated in billion kilometers.

However, not all agree with this view of things. For example, Gary Sank from the University of Alabama (USA) considers, that the stream of charged particles effect, slowing it down, magnetic "wall" outer heliosphere, which are formed by the accumulation of magnetic field lines.

And yet, according to specialists, the border of the heliopause close: in may and July this year ' Voyager-1" recorded unprecedented outbursts of cosmic radiation, "beating" from outside the Solar system. Probably the machine will cross the boundary of our system by the end of this year, scientists say.

Meanwhile, David Mccommas from the Southwest research Institute and Nathan Shvadron of new Hampshire University (USA) suggested that Voyager" now flying over the area where the magnetic field lines passing through the outer heliosphere, connected with the magnetic field of the rest of the milky Way, creating channels for the passage of galactic cosmic rays. It having appeared in such corridors, the probe can detect bursts of radiation.

However, cosmic rays, which are subject to acceleration in the field of the heliosphere, can move on to other lines, and not always the sensor can record. If so, then the distance to the heliopause for "Voyager" may be much greater than previously assumed.

Another surprise associated with the space research "Voyager", refers to the phenomenon of the so-called shock wave. In recent decades, scientists believed that the heliosphere generates two different boundary layer, subsequently turning into a head shock wave like a supersonic.

Such a shock wave astronomers had previously discovered by tracking the movement of streams of charged plasma in nearby star systems. It was expected that the Sun is observed a similar picture. However, although the study probes twins Voyager"indeed confirmed the existence of the first layer of the heliosphere, later it turned out that she has an asymmetrical structure, in particular, its magnetic poles are significantly different from each other.

According to scientists, this is due to the strength and direction of the magnetic field, sealing the heliosphere from the outside. Moreover, the speed of its motion is not 94-95 thousand, as previously thought, but only 83 thousand miles an hour, and then the pressure on a quarter less than expected. In short, the heliosphere is moving too slowly, and it is not created enough pressure to cause a shock wave front.

What awaits "Voyagers" next? By 2025 must be exhausted stocks of plutonium isotopes that support their work. It is hoped that by this time the limit of the Solar system will be overcome.