ASTRO-GOBBLEDYGOOK

Okay, don't quit reading before I even get started.  I love 'space stuff' and I promise not to get overly verbose or technical . . . sure, like Trump will stop Tweeting.

A week ago the NASA space probe called Voyager 2 exited the Heliosphere, broke through the Plasma Bubble created by our Sun and entered Interstellar Space.  Voyager 1 did this in 2012.  They are both technically out of our solar system and on their way to - who knows where.

If you read that again, it might make more sense.  In any case, here's the rest of the story.  Voyager 2 was blasted off from Earth in 1977 as was Voyager 1.  They took various circuitous routes past distant planets to give us a look-see.  Now they travel where no other human-made object has gone.

Amazingly, they are both still communicating with NASA at it's Jet Propulsion Lab.   Not amazingly, I have some statistics that will blow your mind. . . well, maybe not.  Anyway, here goes.

Voyager 2 has been in space for 41 years.  It has visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.  It travels at 34,191 mph (that's fast) which is 290 million miles every year.  It is now 11 billion miles from the sun, and it has traveled 18.5 billion miles.  (I know those millions and billions are hard to think about.)

If I haven't put you to sleep yet, get this; it is so far away that it takes light over 16 hours to get from this satellite to Earth.  Remember, it takes the light of the Sun 8 minutes to get to the Earth. 

"What's next?" you say.   Next comes the Oort Cloud.  I'm not going to explain that but the Voyager satellites should get there is about 300 years and get all the way through that cloud in 30,000 years.

Yowzah!

So what should you take away from all this?   "I don't know my gobbledygook and the sky is friggin big!"
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