Voyager 1: The Little Spacecraft That Could

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Voyager 1: The Little Spacecraft That Could

Voyager 1, the spacecraft that launched on a tour of the solar on Sept. 5, 1977, is getting ready to enter interplanetary space.

The spacecraft’s journey started in 1966 when Gary Flandro, then a graduate student working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discovered that the planets were about to align. Not just for him, but for the whole solar system.

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Image: Artist’s rendering of Voyager 2 in the outer regions of the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble around the solar system generated by the solar wind. Credit: NASA