In 1977, NASA launched two identical spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, on a “grand tour” of the outer planets. They were originally designed to last about five years and visit Jupiter and Saturn. Both wildly exceeded that mission. Almost fifty years later, both are still functioning, and both are now beyond the edge of our solar system, drifting into the space between stars.
Voyager 1 is the farthest. It officially crossed into interstellar space in 2012 - the first human-made object ever to do so. Today it’s more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and it’s still moving away at about 38,000 miles per hour. Radio signals from it now take over 22 hours to reach us.
The Voyagers were designed to be a kind of message in a bottle to the universe. Each one carries a gold-plated record (designed in the 1970s) with sounds and images from Earth - greetings in 55 languages, whale songs, classical music, a thumbprint of Earth’s culture. If anyone ever finds them, that’s our calling card.
