True to its name, Voyager 1 leaves home for good

“A new chapter in civilization’s quest to travel to the stars may have begun quietly this month,” writes Lawrence Krauss, Foundation professor and director of the ASU Origins Project, in the Oct. 19 Wall Street Journal. The Voyager 1 satellite, launched in 1977, appears to have exited the solar system, making it our first satellite to officially exit into interstellar space.

Why is this important? Because if we ever truly want to travel in space, we need to leave the solar system in which we live and explore all that is on the outside. Voyager 1 is the first, and “regardless of what happens here on Earth, we have left our mark on the galaxy,” Krauss states in “A Quiet, Faraway Milestone for Humanity.”

“NASA engineers put golden records on both satellites (Voyager 1 and 2), conveying sound and images of our world to any extraterrestrial civilizations,” he adds. “Well after we are long gone, even if no one is likely to ever receive it, there will be some record in our galaxy that we once existed.”