Voyager 1 Leaves the Solar System

When you are taking a good look at the lunar eclipse tonight (from about 6:30 to 8:30), think about this:

The most distant man-made object – the Voyager 1 spacecraft – is finally leaving the Solar System. Astronomers think the probe has reached a boundary where the Sun’s influence starts to wane.

The spacecraft has just entered a region no one has ever explored before, according to Voyager project scientist Edward Stone, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “This is a very exciting time,” he told a NASA news conference in Washington DC. “Voyager is beginning to explore the final frontier of the Solar System.”

Voyager 1 and its companion Voyager 2 were launched on a journey to the outer planets in 1977. Voyager 1 is now about 90 astronomical units from the Sun (one AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). It is the most distant spacecraft in the Solar System, having overtaken the Jupiter probe Pioneer 10 in 1998. Voyager 2 lags behind, at about 73 AU.

That’s something my age travelling 90 AU to the edge of the solar system. How cool is that?