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Nasa's Voyager 1 has entered a new region of space between the Solar System and interstellar space in what Nasa has described as a 'cosmic purgatory'. The spacecraft is close to leaving the Solar System and into the uncharted territory of the Milky Way after more than three decades in space. Voyager 1 was launched with its twin, Voyager 2, by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) in 1977. Voyager 1 is travelling at just under 11 miles per second and sending information from nearly 11 billion miles away from the sun. It is about to become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System, although Nasa expects it to take between several months and years before it completely enters interstellar space. Voyager 2 will follow later. Ed Stone, the Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said: "Voyager tells us now that we're in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back. "We shouldn't have long to wait to find out what the space between stars is really like." The primary mission for the spacecrafts was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After uncovering important findings the mission was extended, with the radio contact with mission control lasting longer than had been expected. Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said: "We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now." Voyager 1 and 2 both hold a a gold-coated copper phonograph record. The record contains over 100 photographs of earth, a selection of greetings from languages around the world and a variety of sounds from the Earth. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote in an introduction to a CD version of the record that "billion years from now, when everything on Earth we've ever made has crumbled into dust, when the continents have changed beyond recognition and our species is unimaginably altered or extinct, the Voyager record will speak for us." The Voyagers have enough power and fuel to operate until at least 2020. It is predicted by that point that Voyager 1 will be 12.4 billion miles from the Sun, whilst Voyager 2 will be 10.5 billion miles away.
It will be the latest sobering economic milestone that few were hoping to see: The U.S. national debt – any day now – will soar above the $15 trillion mark. As of this writing, the total debt is $14.97 trillion, so moving beyond the symbolic $15 trillion is a foregone conclusion. When the unwelcome milestone is reached, it will come at a volatile time both in this country and abroad. Across the Atlantic, President Obama is in Cannes, France, for the G-20 summit that takes place as Europe is trying to finalize a bailout for debt-ridden Greece. Back on the home front, Obama is preparing for a difficult re-election fight next year. Republican candidates from Mitt Romney to Herman Cain have pounced on the country’s economic woes in their bids to win the GOP nomination and the chance to oppose Obama. Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street protests directed at the nation’s financial inequalities continue to rage across the country. In Washington, a polarized Congress has ground to a halt in the dispute on how to jumpstart the economy and reduce the country’s deficits. Only a few months ago, the acrimonious debate on Capitol Hill about raising the debt ceiling – a debate that almost caused the Treasury Department to default on its debts – illustrated the enormous partisan divide that still shows no signs of improving. The approaching $15 trillion debt milestone is not even the only piece of bad economic news for the country. The jobs report for October – released this morning – showed that U.S. employers added an estimated 80,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, worse than economists expected. The unemployment rate decreased to 9.0 percent, down from 9.1 percent a month earlier, small consolation for a nation still struggling to recover from a severe recession.
“We have been reasonable every step of the way in this investigation, and it is a shame that the Obama Administration and House Democrats continue to put up partisan roadblocks to hide the truth from taxpayers. Solyndra was a jobs program gone bad, and we must learn the lessons of Solyndra as we work to turn our economy around and put folks back to work. Our judicious and methodical work over the last eight months has garnered tens of thousands of pages of documents from DOE and OMB that have proven we are on the right track. Now, we need to know the White House’s role in the Solyndra debacle in order to learn the full truth about why taxpayers now find themselves a half billion dollars in the hole. The White House could have avoided the need for subpoena authorizations if they had simply chosen to cooperate. That would have been the route we preferred, and frankly, it would have been better for the White House to get the information out now, rather than continue to drag this out. Our request for documents is reasonable - we are not demanding the President’s blackberry messages as we are respectful of Executive Privilege. What is the West Wing trying to hide? We owe it to American taxpayers to find out.”
