CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Reports last summer than NASA’s long-lived Voyager 1 space probe had finally left the solar system turned out to be a bit premature, scientists said on Thursday.

Rather, the spacecraft, which was launched in 1977 for a five-year mission to study Jupiter and Saturn, has found itself in a previously unknown region between the outermost part of the solar system and interstellar space.

It is an unusual and unexpected thoroughfare, a place where charged particles from the sun have virtually disappeared and those coming from galactic cosmic rays beyond the solar system are plentiful.

By that measure alone, scientists initially thought Voyager 1 did indeed finally reach interstellar space on August 25, 2012, becoming the first man-made object to leave the solar system.

But one key measurement killed that theory. The magnetic field in which Voyager 1 traveled was still aligned like the sun’s. If the probe were truly in interstellar space, scientists expect that the direction of the magnetic field would be different.

‘You can never exclude a really peculiar coincidence, but this was very strong evidence that we’re still in the heliosheath