Voyager 2 Bids Adieu To The Heliosphere, Entering Interstellar Space

When you hit your 40s, it’s only natural to want to try new things.

That little platitude holds true not only for those suffering midlife crises, but also, apparently, for at least one spacecraft launched by NASA. Just a few months after celebrating its 41st birthday, the Voyager 2 probe has left its familiar environs and entered interstellar space — only the second human-made object in history to do so, after Voyager 1 did it in 2012.

“I think we’re all happy and relieved that the Voyager probes have both operated long enough to make it past this milestone,” Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement released Monday. “This is what we’ve all been waiting for.”