On September 5, 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, initiating a historic mission to explore the outer solar system. The probe was engineered for a rapid trajectory to Jupiter, allowing it to overtake its twin, Voyager 2, which had launched weeks earlier on a broader “Grand Tour” including Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 conducted its first planetary flyby in March 1979 and subsequently passed Saturn in November 1980, a maneuver that propelled the spacecraft out of the planetary system and into interstellar space.
In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, a milestone that highlighted its status as NASA’s most distant and enduring mission. It surpassed Pioneer 10 as the farthest human-built object from Earth by February 1998. As of this year, the spacecraft is traveling at a distance of 15.9 billion miles (171.6 astronomical units) from our planet.
Despite completing nearly five decades of operation, Voyager 1 continues to collect scientific data. However, the power output from its nuclear radioisotope thermoelectric generator has diminished since launch, necessitating that NASA systematically deactivate heaters and secondary instruments to conserve energy. On April 17 of this year, mission controllers commanded the spacecraft to power down its low-energy charged particles experiment after nearly 50 years of continuous monitoring of the deep space ion, electron, and cosmic ray environment.
Looking ahead, Voyager 1 is projected to pass within approximately 1.6 light-years of the star AC+79 3888 in about 40,000 years. To ensure potential extraterrestrial intelligence encounters a message from humanity, the probe carries a gold-plated copper record featuring sounds, images, and greetings from Earth.
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