Ay lad, we built things to last in 'the good ole days'

Let's hope they keeping for another few years.... hello 40th :)

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Fun with scaling factors:

If the sun was the size of a 1cm marble, Earth would be 1m away, Neptune would be 30m away, Voyager 1 would be 128m away, and Alpha Centuri would be 300km away.

A little bit of Earth out there somewhere in the dark yonder....never to be forgotten.

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The Kite Fliers

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Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

To infinity and beyond...and who knows, maybe to encounter an alien life form one day...

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rOZZ
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http://www.space.com/17688-voyager-1.html?cid=51463011539464

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rOZZ
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On to the stars.

http://www.latimes.com/la-sci-sn-nasa-confirms-voyager-1-has-exited-the-solar-system-20130912,0,6990209.story

NASA confirms Voyager 1 has left the solar system

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20130912.html#.UjIJMT_CY40

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.

New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident. A report on the analysis of this new data, an effort led by Don Gurnett and the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, is published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

"Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap into interstellar space," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are."

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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.

Thanks, Gary

That's so amazing we leave our marks in places no man will ever come or see with the naked eye...

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rOZZ
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Assuming the craft continues to function normally, they will have to start turning off other on-board instruments from 2020, and it is expected to run out of power completely in 2025.

Yes, indeed hope they find something.

One day, in many years to come, when we can travel through space at speeds far
in excess of that possible at the moment, man's quest will be to, "Find Voyagers
and recover"....

I hope they find it some time in the future and give it a new battery (or the futures equivalent) so we can keep in touch. I'd like to think Voyager will continue with its journey uninterrupted, rather than bringing her home.

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Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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rOZZ
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...go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

A faint ion trail?

(warning: obscure Star Trek reference)

...go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

A faint ion trail?

(warning: obscure Star Trek reference)

Who knows which atoms combine with which over there...

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rOZZ
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Who knows which atoms combine with which over there...

Dilithium atoms, I'm pretty sure.

Who knows which atoms combine with which over there...

Dilithium atoms, I'm pretty sure.

Hmmm...fictional...

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rOZZ
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Dilithium is ficitonal??? Then how are we going to do the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs?

Voyager 1, phones home.




The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a network of radio telescopes operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, spotted the signal of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft from 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers) away. The image was taken on Feb. 21, 2013.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/voyager-signal-interstellar-space-nasa_n_3934023.html

Voyager 1 Radio Signal From Interstellar Space Captured In New NASA PHOTO

Voyager 1 exits solar system, let's hope aliens don't bring it back.
The universe wastes nothing, it's simply transferred.

Lynn

.NASA News Conference: Voyager Reaches Interstellar Space.

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rOZZ
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I think the Oort Cloud could be considered a part of the solar system and it extents out at least 0.79 LY and possibly as much as 3 light years. The voyagers have a way to go yet before they leave the solar system.

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I think the Oort Cloud could be considered a part of the solar system and it extents out at least 0.79 LY and possibly as much as 3 light years. The voyagers have a way to go yet before they leave the solar system.

I always thought the same thing. Thanks for posting that.

The universe wastes nothing, it's simply transferred.
Lynn

I'm currently re-watching the tv series Cosmos, and Carl Sagan just made mention of the Voyager program(at that time - 1980 - in it's heyday of snapshotting the solar system).

If you haven't seen Cosmos since you were a kid, or never seen it, I highly recommend it - May look a little dated in production, but it's timeless in spirit.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place