Mapping Voyager 1's Incredible 36-Year Trek Through Space

It's a hard knock life for a planetary probe. Launched Sept. 5, 1977, the stalwart Voyager 1 spacecraft has been Earth's most distant ambassador since 1998.

And it's still going.

March 5 marked the 35th anniversary of Voyager's closest contact with Jupiter, when the spacecraft came within 217,000 miles of the surface of the planet

Now approximately 11.8 billion miles away, Voyager 1 continues its lonesome trek through the heliosheath, a transitional region that borders interstellar space. Traveling about 36,000 miles per hour, the probe will pass into interstellar space by the end of the decade, scientists estimate, making it the first human-made object ever to do so Read more...