Voyager 1 launched on September 5, 1977. Its primary mission was to study Jupiter and Saturn. It completed that in three years. Then, instead of being switched off, it kept going.
As of 2025, Voyager 1 is over 24 billion kilometers from Earth — more than 160 times the Earth-Sun distance. A radio signal from the spacecraft, travelling at the speed of light, takes more than 22 hours to reach us. It is the most distant human-made object ever.
The Grand Tour Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 were launched to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that happens roughly once every 175 years. Using gravity assists from Jupiter and Saturn, they were flung outward at speeds no rocket alone could provide. Voyager 2 went on to fly by Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989) — still the only spacecraft to have visited those planets.
Leaving the Sun In August 2012, NASA confirmed Voyager 1 had crossed the heliopause — the boundary where the Sun's solar wind ends and interstellar space begins. It is now technically in interstellar space, though still inside the Sun's gravitational influence. It would take Voyager 1 about 40,000 years to come within 1.6 light-years of another star (Gliese 445), if it were heading anywhere in particular. It isn't.
Ancient Technology Still Working Voyager 1 runs on three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) powered by decaying plutonium-238. The available power drops by about 4 watts every year, and engineers have been turning off instruments one at a time to keep the essentials running.
The onboard computers have a total memory measured in kilobytes. Software updates are still occasionally sent — over a 22-hour one-way link. In 2024, the JPL team successfully repaired a data corruption issue by remotely patching code in a memory chip that had partially failed.
The Golden Record Both Voyagers carry a 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph record containing greetings in 55 languages, music from around the world (including Beethoven, Chuck Berry, and traditional pieces from many cultures), and 116 images of Earth. Carl Sagan led the team that chose the contents. The record is designed to last over a billion years in the vacuum of space. If anyone, anywhere, ever finds it, they will know we existed.
Power will run out sometime in the 2030s. After that, the Voyagers will continue silently, drifting through the galaxy, essentially forever.