After travelling for more than 33 years the Voyager 1 probe reached the boundaries of the solar system: so far in fact the solar wind that hit it travelled at supersonic speed but in the border zone called “termination shock” reached by the probe it slows down until it stops.

Originally the Voyager 1 was supposed to be part of the Mariner probes program but the techinogical progress and the initial prject to have this new probe make the Grand Tour of the external planets of the solar system led to the decision to create the Voyager program. For budgetary reasons the Voyager 1 mission was then limited to the trip near Jupiter and Saturn.

The Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, curiously after its twin Voyager 2 which was however launched on a different route and reached a lower speed.

In January 1979 the Voyager 1 started taking pictures of Jupiter and went on for some months giving the best images of the planet and its satellites ever seen so far. In November 1980 the Voyager 2 passed close to Saturn taking pictures of the planet with its rings and its satellites, particularly Titan.

The trajectory that brought the Voyager 1 to study Titan during the following years led it farther and farther from the plane of the ecliptic. That’s the reason why in 1990 it could take a series of pictures that put together created a unique “portrait” of various planets of the solar system, though Mercury, Mars and Pluto were too small to be included.

[ad name=”Google Adsense 300″]

During the years various Voyager 1 instruments became unusable due to the progressive limitations in power production but the probe is still capable of sending unique data for the comprehension of what happens at the boundaries of the solar system. That’s how recently the scientists who are still following its trip realized about the solar wind slow down that marks the solar system border at about 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the Sun.

Now scientists are trying to estimate when the Voyager 1 will reach interstellar space. At the moment it seems that the probe will reach that frontier in about four years. Let’s expect more surprises and discoveries from this extraordinary device built during an age more favorable to space reasearch.