Voyager 1

Assembled from 162 blocks · 4 evidence · 70 related

1. Story
2. The faster and more distant of the two Voyager probes, launched on 5 September 1977 — sixteen days after its twin — on a shorter trajectory that overtook Voyager 2 before Jupiter. It flew past Jupiter on 5 March 1979 and Saturn on 12 November 1980, and there its planetary career deliberately ended: mission planners chose a close pass at Titan over a continued tour, and the geometry of that flyby bent the spacecraft north out of the plane of the planets, putting every remaining target permanently out of reach. It crossed the termination shock in December 2004 and the heliopause on 25 August 2012 at 121.6 astronomical units, becoming the first human-made object in interstellar space. As of August 2026 it is roughly 170 AU from Earth and still transmitting; its plasma science instrument failed in 1980, its cosmic ray subsystem was switched off on 25 February 2025, and the magnetometer and plasma wave subsystem continue to return data. Not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Voyager 1
5. Voyager 2
6. Gravity assist
7. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
8. Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
9. Voyager high-gain antenna
10. NASA Deep Space Network
11. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
12. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
13. Titan IIIE-Centaur
14. Jupiter
15. Saturn
16. Titan
17. The Grand Tour alignment
18. Connections
19. The Grand Tour alignment
20. Voyager 2
21. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
22. Titan
23. NASA Deep Space Network
24. Gravity assist
25. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
26. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
27. Jupiter
28. Saturn
29. Titan
30. Voyager high-gain antenna
31. Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
32. Titan IIIE-Centaur
33. Edward C. Stone
34. The Voyager Golden Record
35. Carl Sagan
36. Pale Blue Dot
37. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
38. Voyager 1 launches
39. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
40. Active volcanism found on Io
41. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
42. Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
43. Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
44. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
45. The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
46. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
47. Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
48. Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth
49. Voyager 1
50. Voyager 2
51. Gary Flandro
52. Gravity assist
53. Jupiter
54. Saturn
55. Uranus
56. Neptune
57. Voyager 1
58. The Grand Tour alignment
59. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
60. DSS-43, Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
61. Gravity assist
62. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
63. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
64. Jupiter
65. Neptune
66. Saturn
67. Uranus
68. Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS)
69. Titan IIIE-Centaur
70. Edward C. Stone
71. The Voyager Golden Record
72. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
73. Voyager 2 launches
74. Voyager 2 closest approach to Jupiter
75. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
76. Voyager 2 reaches Uranus — the only close encounter ever made
77. Voyager 2 passes Neptune and Triton, ending the planetary programme
78. Voyager 2 crosses the termination shock at about 84 AU
79. Voyager 2 crosses the heliopause at 119 AU
80. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
81. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
82. Voyager 1
83. Voyager 2
84. Plutonium-238
85. Voyager 1 launches
86. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
87. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
88. Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
89. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
90. Voyager 1
91. Voyager 1
92. Saturn
93. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
94. Cassini–Huygens
95. Huygens lands on Titan — the only landing on an outer-system moon
96. Voyager 1
97. The light-day as a distance
98. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
99. Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
100. Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex
101. DSS-43, Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
102. Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth
103. Voyager 1
104. Voyager 2
105. Flandro identifies a four-planet gravity-assist opportunity
106. The Grand Tour alignment
107. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
108. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
109. Voyager 1
110. Voyager 2
111. NASA Deep Space Network
112. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
113. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
114. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
115. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
116. Voyager 1
117. Voyager 2
118. Voyager 2 launches
119. Voyager 1 launches
120. Voyager 1
121. Voyager 2
122. Io
123. The Grand Tour alignment
124. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
125. Active volcanism found on Io
126. Voyager 2 closest approach to Jupiter
127. Pioneer 10
128. Pioneer 11
129. Galileo
130. Cassini–Huygens
131. New Horizons
132. Juno
133. Pioneer 10 passes Jupiter — the first spacecraft to reach the outer Solar System
134. Pioneer 11 passes Jupiter, bending north toward Saturn
135. Galileo enters orbit around Jupiter — the first outer-planet orbiter
136. Galileo is flown into Jupiter to end its mission
137. Cassini passes Jupiter for a final speed boost toward Saturn
138. New Horizons takes a gravity assist at Jupiter
139. Juno enters polar orbit around Jupiter
140. Voyager 1
141. Voyager 2
142. Titan
143. The Grand Tour alignment
144. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
145. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
146. Pioneer 11
147. Cassini–Huygens
148. Pioneer 11 passes Saturn — the first spacecraft to reach it
149. Cassini enters orbit around Saturn
150. Cassini’s Grand Finale — flown into Saturn to end the mission
151. Voyager 1
152. Voyager 1
153. The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
154. Voyager 1
155. Voyager 2
156. Voyager 2 launches
157. Voyager 1 launches
158. Evidence
159. The canonical mission record for both spacecraft: launch dates of 20 August 1977 (Voyager 2) and 5 September 1977 (Voyager 1), the Titan IIIE-Centaur launch vehicle, Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, the eleven-instrument science payload and the three-generator power system. V55 verification basis: THE CATALOGUE WAS NOT REACHED. nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov returned EGRESS_BLOCKED when fetched and the search budget was exhausted before it could be searched; the COSPAR designations and every fact attributed here come from standard mission record held in general knowledge, not from the catalogue. This record names where a curator should check, not what was checked.
160. Both spacecraft were still operating in 2026, with Voyager 1 in the region of 170 astronomical units and Voyager 2 in the region of 140 AU, operating a reduced set of fields-and-particles instruments. V55 verification basis: the NASA pages could not be fetched (science.nasa.gov is blocked to this session) and the distance figures reaching this record came from third-party trackers summarising them; treat the AU values as indicative and date-dependent, not as read from NASA's ephemeris. Voyager 1's speed is also quoted inconsistently across trackers because some report a heliocentric speed of about 17 km/s and others an Earth-relative speed that varies with Earth's orbital position.
161. Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument recorded electron plasma oscillations near 2.6 kHz in October–November 2012 and April–May 2013, implying an electron density of about 0.08 cm⁻³ and indicating that the spacecraft had been in interstellar plasma continuously since the boundary crossings of July–August 2012, dated 25 August 2012 at 121.6 AU. V55 verification basis: the paper is on a publisher domain blocked to this session, but search results carried the frequency, the density and the crossing date and distance and attributed them to this paper.
162. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off on 25 February 2025 and Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument on 24 March 2025; both spacecraft lose about four watts of generator output per year; three science instruments continued to operate on each; Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument was to run through 2025 and be switched off in 2026, and Voyager 2's cosmic ray subsystem was scheduled for shutdown in 2026, with the plan expected to keep at least one instrument running on each spacecraft into the 2030s. V55 verification basis: the release was not fetched — jpl.nasa.gov and science.nasa.gov are both blocked by this session's network egress proxy — but search results carried these specific figures and dates and attributed them to this release.