SPACE
Voyager 1 records mysterious ‘hum’ in interstellar space
Words by Stephanie Pappas
An illustration of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is travelling through interstellar space
© Alamy
44 years after it rocketed off from Earth, Voyager 1 is detecting the background ‘hum’ of interstellar space for the first time. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, left the bounds of the Solar System, known as the heliosphere, in 2012. The heliosphere is the bubble of space influenced by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that emanates from the Sun.