Voyager 1 was a 1,592lb space probe launched on September 5, 1977. Its original mission was to study the outer solar system. Interestingly, on board the Voyager spacecraft is a "Golden Record," which is a gold-plated copper AV disc that contains information, sounds, and pictures from Earth in case it is ever encountered by extraterrestrials. It has spoken greetings from the President of the United States and the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The pictures found on this 12-inch were selected by Carl Sagan and there are over 115 of them. A variety of natural sounds found on Earth are also contained on the disc. Various musical selections and spoken greetings from people of Earth in 55 different languages also made their way onto the record.
Currently Voyager is in interstellar space. In other words, it has exited the solar system and is currently the farthest man-made object from the Earth. As of September 2013, Voyager 1 was 18.7 billion kilometers from the Sun. Voyager's power systems will enable most of its instruments to be operable until around 2025. Since nothing can last forever, Voyager will eventually cease to have power and will become another piece of drifting space junk. Possibly some day in the future we will have the technology to go beyond where Voyager has and will go. As long as aviation and space flight continues to progress as it has, we will one day venture into interstellar space ourselves.
Image of Voyager 1
Source: NASA.gov
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