Voyager 1

Mission Profile

Voyager 1 is a NASA deep space probe launched on 5 September 1977 aboard a Titan IIIE/Centaur, originally designed for a four-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn but still operating nearly five decades later as humanity's most distant spacecraft. During its planetary encounters, Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes on Io, revealed the complex braided structure of Saturn's rings, and imaged Titan's thick nitrogen atmosphere. On 25 August 2012, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and became the first human-made object confirmed to have entered interstellar space, now transmitting data from over 24 billion kilometers away. The Golden Record it carries — containing sounds, music, and images of Earth — was designed as a message to any extraterrestrial civilization that might someday encounter it.