Voyager 1

I remember standing on the roof of our house as a teenager and watching the new Echo satellite pass by overhead. It was the USA's first satellite and was simply a big Mylar balloon. It was a propaganda effort to reassure the citizens that the US did have a space program. Amazing stuff for a teenager over 40 years ago.

Then, 26 years ago, I again was fascinated by our first spacecraft sent out to explore the solar system. Voyager one continues to speed away from the sun and broadcast reports back to us about what it is finding. And what it is finding is better than science fiction.

Voyager has entered this solar systems final frontier after passing by all of the planets. It has come to the point where the sun no longer has influence. It is leaving our solar system and entering true "space." It is called the termination shock region. It is 8.7 million miles from the sun. Oh, did I say it took 26 years to get there? Whew!

You can read about it here.