Tuesday, April 26, 2011

NASA Invites Public to Journey Toward Interstellar Space

This artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image and caption

NASA will hold a special NASA Science Update at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, April 28, to discuss the unprecedented journey of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft to the edge of our solar system.

The event will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed at http://www.nasa.gov . In addition, the event will be carried live on Ustream, with a live chat box available, at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

After 33 years in space, the spacecraft are still operating and returning data from about 16 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) away from our sun. The Voyagers also carry a collection of images and sounds from Earth as a message to possible life elsewhere in the galaxy.

The participants are:
-- Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist and professor of physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Ann Druyan, creative director, Voyager Interstellar Message Project; Carl Sagan's co-author and widow
-- Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Merav Opher, Voyager guest investigator and assistant professor of astronomy, Boston University

For more information about the Voyager mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager .

For NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.cbrown@nasa.gov