Voyager 1 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1977 and has been running away from home ever since. Scientists first suspected that it had been traveling through interstellar space back in August 2012, though a broken plasma sensor prevented confirmation until alternative methods were used in 2013. It is currently over 19.2 million kilometers away from Earth.
Slooh will be celebrating two years of Voyager 1’s interstellar travel tonight with a webcast beginning at 7:30 pm EDT. The webcast will feature more information about Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, including images that show where the probes currently are, relative to their position from Earth. The webcast will also show some of the incredible images the probes have obtained over the last 37 years.
Dr. Alan Cummings will be a very special guest for the webcast. He serves as the Voyager project’s co-investigator and has been with the project since 1973.
"The Voyagers were the most famous and successful spacecraft in the history of human exploration of the universe,” Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said in a press release. “The found astonishing new satellites, revealed first-ever close-up views of two major planets, and now continue to contribute to our knowledge of the cosmos almost forty years after their launch. They deserve their own statues or monuments in parks. Monday evening, Slooh's vivid live celebration of their continued operation and their astonishing accomplishments, accompanied by real-time commentary and full color telescope images, are actually the minimum they deserve."
You can tune into the webcast right here, starting at 7:30 pm EDT. Use #SloohVoyager in social media to join in the conversation!
