NASA's two
Voyager spacecraft are celebrating three decades of flight as they careen
toward interstellar space billions of miles from the solar system's edge.
Voyager 2
launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977. Both
spacecraft continue to return information from distances more than three times
farther away than Pluto, where the sun's outer heliosphere meets the boundary
of interstellar space.
Voyager 1
currently is the farthest human-made object at a distance from the sun of about
9.7 billion miles (15.6 billion kilometers). Voyager 2 is about 7.8 billion
miles (12.6 billion kilometers).
"The
continued operation of these spacecraft and the flow of data to the scientists
is a testament to the skills and dedication of the small operations team,"
said Ed Massey, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
clipped from: www.space.com 
