Voyager 1

Voyager 1 launched into space on September 5th, 1977 and is now unknown km from Earth. Its primary destination is Jupiter and Saturn, which it arrived at on March 5th, 1979 . Wherever Voyager 1 goes, it carries its trusty cameras, cosmic dust analyzer, golden record, magnetometer, radar, radio receiver, radio transmitter, spectrograph, and spectrometers. Voyager 1 often chats with humans from NASA / JPL.

Voyager 1 is a space probe that has gone to the outer reaches of our solar system and beyond. Before leaving the solar system, Voyager 1 embarked on a multi-planet journey, flying by both Jupiter and Saturn. The space probe took some of the very first detailed images of Jupiter, Saturn and their moons. On Jupiter’s moon Io, Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes - the very first that had ever been seen on another world. Voyager 1 has a twin spacecraft named Voyager 2 that ventured through the solar system on a different route. In August 2012, NASA announced that Voyager 1 was the first space probe to reach interstellar space (the space between stars). Along with its instruments, Voyager 1 carries a golden record containing sounds of nature, music, different languages and 115 images representing the diversity of life on Earth. The golden record was curated by Carl Sagan and others in hopes of it one day reaching an extraterrestrial spacefaring civilization.

Worth Exploring:

the data from the cosmic ray detector on Voyager 1 and 2
a playlist of the music, sounds and greetings on the Voyager Golden Record
a cute animated story about Voyager 1
the sound of interstellar space as captured by Voyager 1's plasma spectrometer

(top image: a close-up of Jupiter taken by Voyager 1, NASA/JPL-Caltech)