30 Years of Voyager

Imagine being billions of miles from home, alone in a silent black void. With a voice too weak to be heard, and your mind and body slowly growing numb. Imagine not having the ability to stop, to turn, to look anywhere but ahead, knowing that no one had ever been where you are, and that you will never see your home again. That is the story of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They have incredible stories, and they're 30 years old this month, and they're still giving weekly status reports, even though they'll run out of power soon, and we're losing the ability to hear them.

"Voyager 1 was launched Sept. 5, 1977 atop a Titan rocket with a Centaur-6 upper stage. Still operational for 30 years, Voyager 1 is more than 103.2 astronomical units away from the Sun. Astronomers believe it has now entered the solar system's heliosheath -- the termination shock region between the sun's solar wind and interstellar space. Signals from Voyager 1 take 13 hours to reach Earth, traveling at the speed of light." Wired has a few of the photos that Voyager has taken on its mission.

The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph record included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. It contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find it. (Listen to it here)

Voyager 1 and Opportunity

Breathe deep, mine eyes, the frosty saga of eternal suns.
From unseen depths and dreams undreamt,
I sing the gleaming cantos of unvanquished space.
By thought I embrace the universal,
With wings of mind I sail the infinitude.
Glory! 'tis the stars which beckon man's spirit
and set our souls adrift!

18 billion kilometers from where you are sitting is a spacecraft named Voyager 1. It's been speeding away from you for nearly 30 years, and passed by our gas giants: Jupiter, and Saturn. If you were to send it a message, even at the speed of light, it would take 28 hours for you to hear back from it, it's so far away. And yet every week it checks in, and tells us what it's like out beyond the edge of the solar system.

Meanwhile, on the red planet, Voyager 1's little cousin, Opportunity continues its mission to explore our closest neighbour. Opportunity has lived 12 times longer than was ever expected, and has spent the last 3.5 years driving across the martian surface, inspecting rocks, and looking for signs of life, and sending us status updates. So now they've decided to send the rover into Victoria Crater, a place it will probably never return from. It may not be much, but 50 million miles away from us, our robot emissary is driving across Mars, and that to me, is pretty darn cool.