Voyager 1 Location

by Nicole Nguyen 0

Thirty-five years ago, NASA's Voyager 1 probe was launched aboard the Titan III, and it hasn't stopped exploring the unknowns of outer space since. At its current distance, Voyager 1 takes about 16 hours to return 20-watt radio signals, moving at 186,000 miles per second, back to Earth. Now the spacecraft is in an extremely remote part of the solar system, over 11 billion miles from Earth, and may soon leave the sun's influence.

It seems that Voyager has discovered a "magnetic highway" that pushes lower-energy particles to move into deep space, perhaps toward a galaxy far, far away. According to NASA, it may take as soon as months or as long as years for Voyager 1 to cross into the far reaches of the Milky Way, but they do believe that it is the final layer between the probe and interstellar space.

How long will the Voyagers continue to journey through the galaxy? Perhaps forever, but as long as the spacecraft is able to beam data back to mission control, then we'll be able to follow it on its expedition of the final frontier.