First Contact

The unmanned spacecraft plunged further into the unknown, the Sun no brighter than the stars towards which it had been hurled by gravity at more than thirty-four-thousand mph. It reached the edge of the solar system thirty-six years into its mission, when its instruments – designed to measure planetary magnetic fields, the flux of ions and electrons, and the strength of cosmic rays – encountered the heliopause. Physicists had predicted the existence of such a dynamic surface, an envelope as it were, surrounding the solar system where the interstellar wind would be as strong as the flow of particles emanating from the Sun. 

The scientific instruments on Voyager One recorded this momentous event for the scientists of Earth, the third planet from the Sun, to ponder acrimoniously, which was their manner of communicating amongst themselves. Oblivious of their confusion and determination to explain its ambiguous measurements, the interstellar traveler continued on its journey toward the unknown reaches of the galaxy, its instruments powered by a nuclear reactor that would sustain it until 2030 or later. Had it been sentient, Voyager One would have been proud of its accomplishment.

Given the profusion of conflicting data gathered by Voyager One, scientists developed a new model of the heliopause that integrated turbulence into the interaction of the heliosphere with interstellar space, and decided that the lonely spacecraft had just encountered a pothole as it departed the solar system.  The intrepid interstellar voyager continued along its trajectory nonplussed, until it encountered something its creators hadn’t anticipated.