Voyager 1, which was launched 35 years ago, is now the most distant man-made object to leave our planet. But where is it now? According to W.R. Webber of the New Mexico State University Department of Astronomy and F.B. McDonald of the University of Maryland Institute of Physical Science and Technology, the probe left the Solar System on August last year. It seems that Nasa doesn’t agree though.

Launched on 5^th September 1977, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter in 1979 before visiting Saturn in 1980. Helped by the giant planets, the probe was shot toward interstellar space.

Weber and McDonald say that Anomalous Cosmic Rays (ACR), cosmic ray particles trapped by the Sun’s magnetic field, used to dominate the radiation detected by the probe before August 25, 2012. But on that day, ACR intensity dropped to less than one percent within hours, and kept on decreasing over the days that followed. Meanwhile, they noted an increase in the intensity of Galactic Cosmic Rays, which are from outside the Solar System. They are saying that this data suggests that Voyager 1 has left the Solar System.

Webber says, “Within just a few days, the heliospheric intensity of trapped radiation decreased, and the cosmic ray intensity went up as you would expect if it exited the heliosphere“.

But NASA disagrees. Back in December 2012, the Voyager team announced that Voyager 1 is within ‘the magnetic highway’, a region where energetic particles changed dramatically. NASA says that an indicator of the probe reaching interstellar space will be a change in the direction of the magnetic field. That change is yet to happen.

[Source]

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And then I came across FreedomPop, which has only been in beta for the last little while. The kicker here is that I don’t have to pay a dime; FreedomPop gives out 4G wireless Internet for free, including providing you with a mobile hotspot. To give them a try, I ordered the FreedomPop Photon 4G mobile hotspot and here are my impressions.

What Is FreedomPop?

Backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, FreedomPop aims to provide Americans with free Internet access. The “free” account is limited to just 500MB a month (you can pay for more), but it is free. All you have to do is get the USB dongle or the mobile hotspot, but both of those are free too; you just have to put down a (refundable) security deposit. On paper, this sounds better than the NetZero 4G offering which only provides 200MB/month for a first year and you have to buy a wireless device from them.

The FreedomPop Photon 4G mobile hotspot is exactly the same as the CLEAR Spot Voyager, except it has been re-branded. This is because FreedomPop is an MVNO that is currently utilizing the CLEAR WiMAX network. What this means is that while you get “4G WiMAX” speeds, coverage is not nearly as good as the majors. Thankfully, FreedomPop has signed a deal to use the Sprint LTE network and they should be rolling that out some time in 2013.

Setup and Configuration

So, what about the Photon 4G itself. It’s actually a lot smaller than I expected, measuring about half the size of a modern smartphone at about 2.6″ x 2.6″ x 0.5″. There’s a 1830mAh battery inside that’s reportedly good for up to six hours of continuous use. It has a range of up to 100 feet and can connect with up to eight Wi-Fi devices simultaneously.

There are three indicator lights on the front: Power, Wi-Fi, and 4G. In case you ever forget what any of the colors mean, there is a handy guide printed on the back of the Photon. The power light, for instance, is solid green when the battery is close to full, changing to amber and finally red as it starts to drain.

The setup process couldn’t be easier. Also printed on the back of the device is your default SSID and password. You turn on the Photon 4G by holding the power button, give it a minute to start up, and then connect to it with your smartphone, tablet, laptop or whatever other WiFi-enabled device the way you would connect to any access point. Assuming you have 4G signal, you are now connected to the web.

The Mobile Admin Page

The Photon 4G acts more or less like a regular router, so after connecting to it, you can use your mobile browser and enter 192.168.1.1 to get to the mobile admin page.

This is significantly stripped down from what you’d get from your wireless router at home, but you do have access to all the basics that you need. This includes monitoring the battery level and 4G signal, as well as easily changing the SSID and password (which you’ll probably want to do). Curiously, you cannot access your FreedomPop account from here to see how much data you have consumed. This can become troubling if you’re getting close to your quota and run the risk of overage fees.

Coverage and Speed Tests

So, how does this perform in the real world? It’s a bit of a mixed bag. I had previously borrowed my friend’s T-Mobile 4G hotspot and I had coverage just about everywhere I went. Speeds were generally very good too. FreedomPop is a little different.

My testing took me from Bellingham to the edge of Seattle in Washington state. I did not have any 4G signal between the US-Canada border and Bellingham, but I did pick up a signal when I got into town. It was mostly fine when I was outdoors or near a window, but the signal did begin to fade out when I got into the mall and it fell out entirely when I got into the concrete behemoth known as Costco.

The speed test on the left was performed inside a store in a strip mall in Bellingham. It’s not exactly blazing, but if all you need is some mobile access to e-mail and Facebook, almost 3Mbps is more than adequate. The signal dropped out again as I hit the Interstate, coming back periodically but mostly falling out. It wasn’t until I got to Lynnwood (about 15 minutes north of Seattle) that I got a solid signal again. It was here that I performed the speed test on the right, which is much better at over 6Mbps down and with about half the ping time at 79ms.

I can’t say for certain what the coverage and the speed will be like in your area, but based on my experience, the CLEAR WiMAX network is really only useful when you’re in bigger cities and it’s barely usable in smaller towns. It also has a hard time penetrating dense foliage or buildings and this is likely due the 2500MHz band that it utilizes. It’s good to have some free Internet, but it’s not nearly as reliable as what I was able to get with T-Mobile or AT&T.

Conclusion

Given the price, I suppose I can’t really complain. All I had to do was put down the $100 security deposit and I had a “free” 4G mobile hotspot in my hands. When I was able to get a solid WiMAX signal, the resulting speeds are perfectly adequate for casual use, but it’s getting that solid signal that is such a challenge. I imagine performance with the USB dongle or the iPod touch sleeve would be much the same.

Battery life was pretty close to the claimed six hours, though I wasn’t actively using the connection the whole time. Of course, the Photon was constantly hunting for a 4G signal too. Build quality is good–it has this nice soft finish–and it really couldn’t be any easier to use. I think that FreedomPop is really onto something here, but it just won’t do with the CLEAR WiMAX network. I look forward to what Sprint’s LTE network can bring, but until then, I would not recommend relying on the FreedomPop 4G as your primary mobile Internet service.

The post FreedomPop Photon 4G Mobile Hotspot Review appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Artists impression of Voyager 1 at the edge of the Earth's solar system after a 33-year odyssey. Photo: NASA/JPL

NASA is redrawing models of our solar system as their Voyager 1 spacecraft reaches the cusp of interstellar space ahead of schedule.

But this isn’t the first time the Voyagers have disrupted scientific prediction and theory. Launched in the summer of 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were originally intended for four-year missions to observe Saturn and Jupiter. ”But [they're] still returning data 33 years later,” says Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Here’s a few of the probes’ textbook-changers from over the years.

• The two Voyagers worked in unison with one another to discover actively erupting volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon “Io,” as well as rifts and kinks in Saturn’s rings from the gravitational pull of the planet’s moons. In 1980, with the original mission complete, the Voyager 2 continues onward while Saturn’s pull curves the Voyager 1′s trajectory away from the ecliptic, or the plane on which most planets orbit the sun.
• To take advantage of a planetary alignment that happens once every 176 years, the Voyager 2′s mission was updated to fly by and explore Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989, discovering Neptune’s Great Dark Spot and 1,000-mile-per-hour winds and geysers erupting from the nitrogen ice that forms the polar cap of the planet’s moon “Triton.”
• In December of 2004, the Voyager 1 left the heliosphere – the solar wind bubble – and entered the heliosheath, the outer shell of our sun’s sphere of influence. Travelling at 38,000 mph to Voyager 2′s 35,000 mph and in different directions, the real surprise came when the Voyager 2 did the same in 2008. This proved the heliosphere isn’t a sphere at all, but instead an oblate spheroid (eggish).
• June 2010, NASA scientists realized the solar winds emanating from the sun against the Voyager 1 had slowed to a halt. This means the craft is now far enough out – about 10.8 billion miles from the sun – that interstellar wind in the space between stars has greater influence on the vessel than our sun. ”The solar wind has turned the corner,” says Stone. “Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space.”

Scientists waited for four more monthly readings before they were convinced the solar wind’s outward speed actually had slowed to zero. It has remained at zero since June, proving the heliosheath to be thinner than predicted.

The current mission of Voyagers is to reach the edge of interstellar space, which they estimate the Voyager 1 will do within the next four years.

[Nasa]

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