The Voyager 1 probe launched 45 years ago, on Sept. 5, 1977, just weeks after its twin Voyager 2 but soon overtaking it. The two spacecraft were designed to fly past Jupiter and Saturn, taking advantage of a favorable solar system alignment. At the time, no one expected the spacecraft to still be working more than four decades later. But now, the Voyagers are stretching toward a round 50 years in space. Voyager 1 is currently more than 14.6 billion miles (23.5 billion kilometers) from Earth — that's more than 157 times the distance from our planet to the sun — and is traveling outward at a speed of 38,000 mph (60,000 kph).
"Today, as both Voyagers explore interstellar space, they are providing humanity with observations of uncharted territory," Linda Spilker, Voyager's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, said in a statement (opens in new tab).
