Voyager 1 is NASA’s most distant spacecraft, the first machine to cross the heliopause into interstellar space after flying past Jupiter and Saturn.
About Voyager 1
Launched as one of a pair of probes to the outer planets, Voyager 1 swept past Jupiter and then Saturn, where it made a close pass of the moon Titan. That encounter bent its path up and out of the plane of the planets, which is why it never visited Uranus or Neptune. As it left, it took the series of images known as the Family Portrait, including the Pale Blue Dot view of Earth.
It has since become the most distant human-made object and the first to cross the heliopause, where the Sun’s wind gives way to the gas between the stars. It is powered by the decay of plutonium, and engineers switch instruments off one by one as the power fades. Like Voyager 2 it carries the Golden Record, a message from Earth.
What you see in the piece
The piece places it at its current distance, far beyond the planets. It is far too small to see; its label marks a point of empty space.
Questions
Where is Voyager 1 now?
Beyond the heliopause, in interstellar space, still moving away from the Sun and still sending data to Earth.
Did Voyager 1 leave the Solar System?
It has left the heliosphere, the bubble of the Sun’s wind, but it is still well within reach of the Sun’s gravity, far short of even the inner edge of the Oort cloud.