Celeste Biever, deputy news editor
(Image: NASA/JPL)
Interstellar adventurers abound in science fiction, but in reality Earth has produced none: for now our only hope is NASA's Voyager 1, currently hurtling towards intertsellar space. On its 35th birthday, two images give a feel for just how much the most distant spacecraft from Earth has seen.
Voyager 1 took the image above a mere 13 days after its "birth", a launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, that took place on 5 September 1977. Though still a baby, at this point the craft had made a whopping 11.7 million kilometres of progress while zooming away directly above Mount Everest.
In 1990, at the age of 13, its view of Earth had receded to a mere dot, as seen in the image below, taken as Voyager 1 passed the 6.3-billion-kilometre mark. Both images were assembled from data captured using equipment similar to early television cameras.
By any standard, Voyager 1 has achieved a lot for a 35-year-old. After sailing past Jupiter and Saturn in 1979, its most recent milestone came in 2005 when it passed the termination shock, a point at the edge of the solar system that marks the beginning of the end of the sun's influence. Since then, Voyager 1 has been travelling through the heliosheath, a shell of dense solar wind that separates our solar system from the rest of the galaxy.
When will Voyager 1 actually exit the solar system, earning its stripes as a true interstellar traveller? Measurements released in 2010 suggested Voyager 1 was on the verge of crossing the heliopause, the solar system's final edge - and many are expecting the craft to make its departure by 2014. But the truth is no one knows exactly where the final frontier lies. Voyager may yet have a way to go before it pokes its head out of the solar cocoon and truly begins to explore the rest of the galaxy.
(Image: NASA/JPL)
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