Voyager 1 in interstellar space: 5 things you need to know

On Friday the 13th, Voyager 1 spacecraft became the first man-made object to reach Interstellar space, which is the physical space within a galaxy not occupied by stars or their planetary systems. In actual terms,Voyager 1 is now 13 billion miles or 21 billion km) away from Earth.

Here are five things you should know about Voyager 1:

1. The Voyager spacecraft is carrying a greeting should it encounter any alien life. The greeting is in the form of a12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Nearly 115 images and a variety of natural sounds were added along with spoken greetings in fifty-five languages.

2. According to this _ Times of India report,_the Indian song on the disk is’Jaat kahan ho’, is by Kesar Bai Kerkar and it was chosen by the committee because even though the raga is “formally designated for morning performance, but its popularity has led to its use as a closing number, a kind of encore, for concerts day and night.” Pictures of Taj Mahal are also on the disk.

3. Voyager 1 was planned as Mariner 11 of the Mariner program. Due to budget cuts, the mission was downsized to be a flyby of Jupiter and Saturn, and renamed the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn probes. Later it was changed to Voyager as the nature of the mission changed. The closest approach to Jupiter occurred on March 5, 1979 for Voyager 1.

4. According to NASA 1,000 workyears was devoted to the Voyager project. This is equivalent to one-third the amount of effort estimated to complete the great pyramid at Giza to King Cheops.

5. The Voyagers have enough electrical power and fuel to operate until 2020. By that time, Voyager 1 will be 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion km) from the Sun. It will be no longer able to power any single instrument by 2025.