Universe & space

Launch of Voyager 1

5 September 1977

Voyager 1 is a NASA space probe launched on a Titan-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral, a few weeks after its twin Voyager 2. It flew past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, returning detailed images of their moons and rings, including the first close views of Io's volcanoes and the hazy atmosphere of Titan. It then headed out of the plane of the planets, and in 2012 it crossed the heliopause to become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space. In 1990 it took the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth from billions of kilometres away. Carrying a gold-plated record of sounds and images from Earth, it is the most distant spacecraft from our planet.

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This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.