Although we often consider Pluto the end of the solar system, Voyager 1 is more than three times farther than that and yet still within the Sun’s domain. (2012)
It is the farthest spacecraft from Earth and, as of 2013, the only one in interstellar space. Nearly forty years out, the radio signals from Voyager take over 18 hours to reach Earth. Voyager’s RTG energy source will give out around 2025. Voyager, deaf, dumb, and blind, will reach the next nearby star in 40,000 more years.
If Voyager was aimed at the nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri, it would take over 73,000 years to arrive.
The most … appropriate song on the golden record attached to Voyager. If there was, or is, anything out there to hear it.
Dark was the night.
