The Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched in the 1970s, are heading out of the solar system.
Using the astrometric and radial velocity data from the second Gaia data release, we integrate the trajectories of 7.4 million stars, and the spacecraft, through a Galactic potential in order to identify those stars the spacecraft will pass closest to.
The closest encounters for all spacecraft take place at separations between 0.2 and 0.5 pc within the next million years. The closest encounter will be by Pioneer 10 with the K8 dwarf HIP 117795, at 0.23 pc in 90 kyr at a high relative velocity of 291 km/s.
Coryn A.L. Bailer-Jones (MPIA Heidelberg), Davide Farnocchia (JPL Pasadena)
(Submitted on 7 Dec 2019)
Comments: Extended version of our article published on 3 April 2019 in RNAAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
Journal reference: Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, 3, 59 (2019)
DOI: 10.3847/2515-5172/ab158e
Cite as: arXiv:1912.03503 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1912.03503v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Coryn Bailer-Jones
[v1] Sat, 7 Dec 2019 13:28:00 UTC (75 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.03503
Interstellar
