49 years of Voyager 1: The epic journey that took us beyond the solar system

NASA introduced Voyager 1 on September 5, 1977, and began an epic voyage to explore the outer solar system from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft hurtled toward the outer boundary of the solar system after flying by Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980.

The spacecraft’s next major rendezvous is scheduled to take place in approximately 40,000 years when it flies by another star system, carrying a Golden Record with intriguing sights, sounds and greetings from Earth.

Voyager 2 primarily launched on a four-planet “Grand Tour” of the solar system-gravity-assist trajectory that included flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Its launch on a direct path to Jupiter actually overtook Voyager 2 on the way to Jupiter and preceded their for a flyby in March 1979. It then passed by Saturn in a flyby that launched below the heliosphere.

Voyager 1 is currently 15.9 billion miles from Earth and still flying even after launch. The spacecraft is in the process of collecting further data but its radioisotope thermoelectric generator does not operate at the peak capacity it had at launch; moreover NASA teams have shut down systems to specifically manage the slow reduction in energy over the decades.