NASA's New Horizons nearly 6 billion miles away, nearing heliosphere
Technology
NASA's New Horizons probe, launched way back in 2006, is now nearly 6 billion miles from Earth and getting ready to break out of our solar system.
After waking up from a yearlong nap last month, it's heading toward the edge of the heliosphere, the giant bubble made by the Sun's wind that shields us from cosmic radiation.
New Horizons to reach termination shock
Scientists think New Horizons will hit the "termination shock," where the Sun's wind slows down, sometime between 2029 and 2040.
This isn't its first big moment: it already gave us amazing close-ups of Pluto in 2015 and flew by Arrokoth in 2019 (the farthest object any spacecraft has visited).
As it crosses into interstellar space, it'll send back data to help us learn more about what lies beyond our solar neighborhood.