Voyager 1 turns 35, approaches interstellar space

The craft — one of twin spacecraft sent to explore distant planets — is approaching interstellar space.

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Voyager I, an unmanned craft which has traveled about 18 billion miles from the sun since its launch on Sept. 5, 1977, turns 35 on Wednesday. (Its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, celebrated its 35th on Aug. 20.) Voyager 1 was originally sent to observe Saturn and Jupiter, and is now approaching the fringes of the solar system.

/ NASA via AP

The Earth appears as a dot in this solar system portrait taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft, which is exploring the outer reaches of the solar system, has traveled farther from Earth than any other man-made object.

/ NASA via AP

Loki, a volcano on the Jupiter moon Io, erupts. The eruption was witnessed by Voyager 1 in March 1979 at a distance of 304,000 miles. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.

Roger Ressmeyer / NASA via Corbis

This image taken by the Voyager 1 in 1979 shows a volcanic plume on Io, one of Jupiter’s many moons.

/ NASA via AP

Voyager 1 took this picture of the dark side of Saturn, a view impossible from Earth, as it was leaving the planet to venture on to deep space in November 1980.

/ NASA via Corbis

This photograph, taken by Voyager 2 in January 1986, shows Uranus’s faint rings, which were discovered in 1977. Extremely dark, they may be made of countless fragments of water ice containing radiation-altered organic material. Uranus was unknown to ancient astronomers. British astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet in 1781 using a homemade 15-centimeter telescope.

Calvin Hamilton / NASA/JPL via Kinetikon Pictures

This artist’s rendering provided by NASA shows the Voyager spacecraft barreling away from the sun. Voyager 1 is poised to cross into interstellar space. Both Voyager 1 and 2 are expected to continue to provide critical data for another decade, if not longer — or at least until their energy supplies can no longer power critical subsystems.

/ NASA via AP

This montage of images taken by both Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft of the planets and four of Jupiter’s moons is set against a false-color Rosette Nebula, with Earth’s moon in the foreground. Studying and mapping Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and many of their moons, the Voyager mission provided better images and data than had ever been obtained by Earth-bound scientists. Data collection continues by both Voyager 1 and 2 as the Voyager Interstellar Mission searches for the heliopause — the border between the magnetic influence of the sun and the beginning of interstellar space — and exits the solar system.

/ NASA

This artist’s rendering provided by NASA is of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which was launched 35 years ago Wednesday. (Its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched Aug. 20, 1977.) Cameras aboard the Voyagers were turned off long ago. The nuclear-powered spacecraft, about the size of a subcompact car, still have five instruments to study magnetic fields, cosmic rays and charged particles from the sun known as solar wind. They also carry gold-plated discs containing multilingual greetings, music and pictures — in the off chance that intelligent species come across them.

/ NASA via AP

This artist’s rendering provided by NASA shows the Voyager spacecraft. It is impossible to determine exactly when either Voyager 1 or 2 will reach interstellar space, but signs indicate that Voyager 1 is close to crossing over.

/ NASA via AP

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