Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Voyager 1 - 12,000 Days and Counting


Last month we told you Voyager 2 marked its 12,000th day in space... almost 33 years. Well, yesterday Voyager 1 hit the same milestone -- an astonishing 12,000 days since it blasted off on its remarkable journey.

Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object in space, currently about 11 billion miles from the Sun. And it's still talking to us! Its signal, traveling at the speed of light, takes around 16 hours to reach us here on Earth.

In 1990, with its primary objectives completed, Voyager 1 turned its camera around and took one last picture of the Earth. This famous image, above, is known as the Pale Blue Dot (Carl Sagan's book of the same name is a fantastic read).

You've got to check out this video. It gets me every time:

No comments:

Post a Comment