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Space & Astronomy

Voyager 1 reaches edge of solar system

By T.K. Randall
December 11, 2011 · Comment icon 28 comments

Image Credit: NASA
After three decades Voyager 1 is still going strong at the very fringes of our solar system.
Since its launch in 1977, Voyager 1 has travelled to a distance of over 11 billion miles from the sun making it the furthest man-made object in history. Now after more than 30 years it is still travelling and will soon be the first spacecraft to ever make it in to true interstellar space beyond our solar system.
When NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1977, its primary mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, the largest planets in our solar system. On November 16, 1980, the spacecraft captured this photograph of Saturn from a distance of just 5. 3-million kilometers.


Source: io9 | Comments (28)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #19 Posted by ColoradoParanormal 14 years ago
Would be awesome to see Real-time video footage from it. Unfortunately that technology didn't exist back then. Still awesome what was accomplished back in '77.
Comment icon #20 Posted by Lava_Lady 14 years ago
Amazing...
Comment icon #21 Posted by psyche101 14 years ago
Would be awesome to see Real-time video footage from it. Unfortunately that technology didn't exist back then. Still awesome what was accomplished back in '77. Now that would be something! Imagine running that film compressed down to about 10 hours. I reckon we should fire of a camera and stick it to every passing comet. Then download them on the return path.
Comment icon #22 Posted by psyche101 14 years ago
Hazzard was saying this morning that it would take 17,000 years to make it out to one light year from our solar system. There is a lot to see out there. Mostly nothing, but the bits that do pop up are pretty impressive.
Comment icon #23 Posted by Spectre1979 14 years ago
Too cool!
Comment icon #24 Posted by St.Anger 14 years ago
Just thinking about all the possibilities makes my head hurt Voyager 1 we love you buddy
Comment icon #25 Posted by Archimedes 14 years ago
It really gives you an idea of the utter vastness of space that the furthest man made object from Earth is travelling at just under a million miles per day, took over 30 years to reach the edge of our solar system (depending on how you define where the solar system ends), and if it were travelling towards the closest star to the sun, would still take another 70,000 years to get there. That's just to get to the closest star to our solar system. 70,000 years at 900,000 miles per day! Space is staggeringly, unimaginably big.
Comment icon #26 Posted by ShadowSot 14 years ago
Space is staggeringly, unimaginably big. That's a good a point as any to post this: http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef0148c72b3cbd970c-800wi The picture, for those who have poor connections.
Comment icon #27 Posted by Archimedes 14 years ago
That's some genuine wisdom for the ages right there.Interesting that Carl Sagan should pop up in a slight derail about the vastness of space in this discussion as he was one of the scientists who helped design the golden disc about the Voyager 1 spacecraft, that should it be discovered by ET life, will potentially provide them with some information of where Voyager 1 came from.
Comment icon #28 Posted by ShadowSot 14 years ago
Yep, s'part of the reason I posted the vid. One of the professors at the local college and a member of the Astronomy Club I go to worked with Sagan on the Voyager mission.


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