Humanity’s boldest messenger carries our hopes across the Cosmic Sea
There is something intrinsically romantic about a lone spacecraft drifting through the infinite horizon. It valiantly continues to communicate, even if its time is finite. In February this year, travelling at 61,197 km/h (38,026 mph) relative to the sun, Voyager 1 crossed the 25-billion-kilometre mark (about 15.6 billion miles) from Earth. Radio signals now take about 22.5 hours one way. It is the fourth fastest and furthest-travelled human-made object.
Launched on 5th September 1977, Voyager 1’s mission was to study the boundaries of the heliosphere. It also aimed to begin exploring interstellar space. On 25th August 2012, it became the first spacecraft to cross the heliopause. This theoretical boundary is where the sun’s solar wind can no longer repel stellar winds from surrounding stars. Voyager confirmed this by detecting a surge in cosmic rays and a sharp drop in solar protons.
On its journey, the probe made flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan – Saturn’s largest moon. NASA chose Titan over Pluto due to its substantial atmosphere. Voyager 1 studied magnetic fields, weather systems, and returned the first detailed images of the solar system’s…