once voyager 1 and 2 makes it out of the heliopause, do scientists know what they will find out there? is the space out there still an empty vacuum or are there gas everywhere and sound can actually be heard in that region of space.

Matter is so slight "out there" that one would not expect to hear sound. You'd need many many times more matter in space.

Side point: you've made 9 posts, now, and 7 of those were threads you started (i.e you then appeared to never come back to your own threads). Could you please comment on that? (It's raised some eyebrows).

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Well, they will most certainly improve and further our knowledge of the outer limits of our Solar System and interstellar space in general. We already know that interstellar space is nowhere near empty; matter does exist there, but merely as atoms, molecules and elementary particles. Most of which were created as a result of stellar explosions (i.e. supernovae.)

The Voyagers have already provided us with some really interesting information so far; for example, they've shown that our Solar System is squashed, which was discovered just recently. This alone is something we could have never even thought of if it weren't for the Voyagers. Both probes, especially Voyager 1, should make it to interstellar space well before they're out of fuel, according to recent estimates -- sometime in the next decade. We'll definitely get even more information out of them.

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because i'm already satisfied with the answers provided. (i'm not sure what you mean by "it raised some eyebrows")

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What! Voyager I is near the heliopause?
I am still busy working on the data from the Jupiter flyby!

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So what do 'they' expect from voyager 1 and 2 ?
I would think just less detectable mater. Less of everything.,gravity,heat,dust... and, No. sound does not transverse a vacuum. Sound requires a medium to be transmitted.
Do not be confused by the fact that space, away from this solar system is not actually empty. It is for all but the purest pedantic science boff head, empty.

Dude, that is sooo 1980's. Didnt you know that there has been a new probe since then.



It is neat that there is still new info coming out of ~25 year old data.

IIRC, Voyager 1 started showing signs it was at the heliopause last summer.

Here is JPL/NASA's webpage about Voyager's current mission.

Here is something from 2007 from New Scientist.

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The squashed solar system might be the telltale sign of a solar system in motion - in the direction of the squish the bow wake.

Were these probes designed with instruments to be used specifically when they got past, say the orbit of Pluto? Or have we just been using the normal NASA kung-fu and making use of instruments originally designed for other purposes?

Or to put it another way, was the extended data collection mission for these probes an after-thought, as in "Hey, as long as we're in the neighborhood...", or did they know when they were launched they'd be collecting data from them 30 years later?

Rob

I believe they were more of an after-thought. I almost sure there were no instruments specifically designed for this part of the journey, but I'm not completely sure.

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They were designed for the primary mission (Jupiter/Saturn) at a minimum, but I'm sure a lot of overdesign gave them the confidence it would extend past that.

I'm sure there was plenty of decisions made based on not knowing if there would be future funding.

But; on the voyager site, there's a good chart on the expectations of components at this point in the game.

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Great data.

Given they launched in 1977 and are expected to function to 2025, we are talking about almost 50 years of spacecraft operation! That is absolutely amazing.

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The instruments to detect the heliopause are the same ones to detect the magnetopause around a planet.

This time it is actually using the same probe for what it was designed for, just at a different scale