 PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space. "Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager." In this region, the stream of charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, abruptly slowed down from supersonic speeds and became turbulent. The heliopause is where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance, the outer boundary of the solar system. Spacecraft data revealed the magnetic field became stronger each time Voyager entered the highway region; however, the direction of the magnetic field lines did not change. Voyager data from two onboard instruments that measure charged particles showed the spacecraft first entered this magnetic highway region on July 28, 2012. "If we were judging by the charged particle data alone, I would have thought we were outside the heliosphere," said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator of the low-energy charged particle instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. Since December 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed a point in space called the termination shock, the spacecraft has been exploring the heliosphere's outer layer, called the heliosheath. "We are in a magnetic region unlike any we've been in before -- about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock -- but the magnetic field data show no indication we're in interstellar space," said Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The magnetic field in interstellar space, influenced by winds from explosions of supernovae, is thought to have a roughly North-South orientation, according to NASA astrophysicist Leonard Burlaga. “It may take several more months, it could take several more years,” says Stone. “But we do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space.” 
 
 Voyager’s interstellar future could look a little bleak, depending on how you see it. Voyager 1 may remain within the heliopause for another two to three years, but it's hard to anticipate how long it will be until the probe leaves the solar system, NASA scientists said. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated spacecraft, is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun.
– How to best learn about the edge of the solar system? Actually go there. NASA says its Voyager 1 spacecraft—which launched in 1977—has entered an area of the solar system that scientists didn't know about, the AP reports. "We do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space," says chief scientist Ed Stone. NASA is calling the region a "magnetic highway" where particles from inside the sun's magnetic sphere "zoom out, and higher-energy particles from outside to stream in." Scientists based their conclusion on Voyager's instruments, which show a 1,000-fold decrease in low-energy particles from our solar system and a five-fold jump in high-energy particles from interstellar space, reports Huffington Post. Now Voyager 1 may stay in this in-between zone for two or three years, NASA says. Then comes its future in interstellar space, reports Scientific American: powering down around 2025 and passing a neighboring star in about 40,000 years. After that, it will be billions of years before it approaches another star.