# Voyager 1

*Spacecraft*

Flew past Jupiter and Saturn in 1979-80, took the close look at Saturn's moon Titan that threw it up out of the plane of the planets, and in 2012 became the first object from Earth to cross into interstellar space. It is the most distant human-made thing there is and still answers, on a radio link of about twenty watts that now takes most of a day to reach.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Agency | NASA |
| Launched | 1977-09-05 - still working |
| From the Sun | 25,681,826,031 km (+1,458,588 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 25,674,109,550 km (+3,543,972 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 23 h 47 m |
| Travelling at | 16.9 km/s |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Path

Not an orbit. Saturn's gravity left it above the Sun's escape speed in 1980, so the path is open: 17 km/s outward and 35° above the plane of the planets, for good.

## Along the way

- 1979-03-05 — Closest to Jupiter, and the first sight of Io erupting
- 1980-11-12 — Closest to Saturn, past Titan - the pass that ended the tour
- 1990-02-14 — Turned round and photographed the Earth as a pale dot
- 2012-08-25 — Crossed the heliopause into interstellar space

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=voyager-1
- The mission's own page: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/voyager-1/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt