Journey to a far star !

Voyager 1 has become the longest travelled object launched from planet Earth.  It is about to leave the Heliosphere, the outer edge of our solar system, having passed by and photographed Jupiter and Saturn and passed through the Kuiper belt of asteroids.

This 722 kilo satellite was launched by NASA on May 5, 1977 and has now travelled eighteen billion kilometres..   It has survived long past the expectations of the scientists who designed it and there are expectations that it will continue to send radio messages back to earth until about 2025 when it's power source is likely to finally fail.   Radio messages from that distance take sixteen hours to reach us here.

When it's battery power fades to zero Voyager 1 will continue it's journey at sixteen kilometres a second - forever !    A few centuries ago, people thought the earth was flat and mariners setting out on voyages of discovery feared reaching the end of the world - and dropping off the edge.   Today's scientists think the cosmos is still expanding after it's creation in " the big bang " and therefore Voyager 1 will never run out of new space to explore.

In centuries yet to come this man made object will continue it's travels and it is possible that one day it will be captured by the magnetic pull of a distant star.   Perhaps it will be pulled into orbit around a planet such as our earth or land safely on it's surface due to a lower force of gravity.

We are capable of imagining a host of different scenarios.   If life exists on that far star it could range from a sophistication far beyond our best and brightest, or it could be life at the lower end of the journey of evolution.   Voyager 1 could be laughed at as a simplistic experiment from a early attempt at understanding science - or as  a message from the Gods - to be venerated and used as the focus of prayers.

At least we know that if our civilization becomes extinct by either a nuclear world war or our refusal to heed the messages this ailing planet is sending, at least Voyager 1 will be somewhere in the cosmos giving testimony that human beings once existed !