Voyager 1
Space probe
Facts
- Launch
- 5 September 1977
- Jupiter
- 5 March 1979, at about 280,000 km
- Saturn
- 12 November 1980, at about 126,000 km
- Interstellar space
- 25 August 2012
Voyager 1 is a NASA probe launched in 1977 to fly past Jupiter and Saturn. It passed Jupiter on 5 March 1979 and Saturn on 12 November 1980: it discovered two moons of Jupiter and five of Saturn, new rings around both, and showed that Titan's atmosphere is 90% nitrogen.
On 14 February 1990, about 6 billion km from the Sun, it turned back towards home one last time to photograph the Sun and the planets: in its picture of Earth our planet is a point of light about one pixel across, which Carl Sagan, who came up with the shot, made famous as the pale blue dot. Straight afterwards it switched off its cameras for good, to save power for the long journey.
Since 1 January 1990 it has been on an interstellar mission. On 17 February 1998 it overtook Pioneer 10 to become the most distant human-made object, and on 25 August 2012 it became the first probe to leave the heliosphere and enter interstellar space.
On 18 November 2026 it reaches one light-day from Earth, about 25.9 billion km, a distance no other human-made object has ever reached: a command sent from Earth takes a whole day to get there.
It carries a 30 cm gold-plated copper record with greetings in 55 languages, 35 sounds of nature, music and 115 images.
It is powered by three radioisotope generators, each giving about 158 W at launch: to save power, NASA switched off one instrument in April 2026.