Аннотация:In this paper we discuss physical phenomena that could make the solar wind (SW) termination shock (TS) asymmetric enough to explain observations made by the Voyager 2 spacecraft that suggest that the TS is closer to the Sun by about 12 AU in the Voyager 2 than in the Voyager 1 direction. It is shown that the interstellar magnetic field (ISMF) itself is very unlikely to be solely responsible. Unsteady phenomena are suggested as another possibility. We consider the cases of a SW velocity perturbation propagating through the heliosphere, the 11‐year‐cycle SW‐LISM interaction, the instability of the heliopause, and the TS interaction with a randomly perturbed SW The results are obtained using a multi‐fluid approximation for the SW interaction with the local interstellar medium (LISM).