Are the Voyager spacecraft properly instrumented to explore the galactic frontier of the solar system?
No. Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were designed primarily for study of giant planets during planets flybys. Instruments will measure some very important physical properties of the region but the detailed study of the processes at and beyond the frontier will be performed in the future by a precursor interstellar mission Interstellar Probe. The Interstellar Probe mission has been considered for the last thirty years. (See Instrumentation for interstellar exploration and references therein.) Depending on programmatic priorities, NASA will launch a spacecraft into interstellar space in 1020 years. The mission goal is to reach the pristine, unperturbed (by sun’s presence) interstellar medium (300400 AU from the sun) surrounding the solar system and explore it in-situ. New science questions. While Voyagers have answered some important questions about the physics and processes at the heliospheric boundary, they also raised new ones. In particular, the existing concept of acceleration of ions to
