In September 1977 NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft began its long journey into the unknown space when it was launched from the Kennedy Space Center 16 days later than its twin Voyager 2.
The probes main objective was to conduct close-up studies of the outer planets including their large moons and mysterious ring systems.
Voyager 1 was launched on a faster more direct path that would send the spacecraft hurtling towards Jupiter and Saturn while Voyager 2 would take a slightly different path that would also take it past the two gas giants but then on to Uranus and Neptune taking advantage of a rare planetary arrangement that only occurs once every 175 years.
Within just a couple of weeks of its journey Voyager 1 sent back its first images one of which reveals a crescent-shaped earth and moon hanging in the darkness of space.
This incredible image was the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft and was captured when Voyager 1 was 7.25 million miles away from Earth. Because of the direct path that Voyager 1 was set on it only took the spacecraft approximately one-and-a-half years to get to the first and largest gas planet in our solar system in January 1979.
Voyager 1 began taking photographs of Jupiter during its approach and captured almost 1,900 images during the flyby.
This time-lapse records Jupiter over a period of 60 days and shows the gas planet swirling clouds rotating within bright bands exceeding any image ever taken of the planets from Earth incredible close-up images of Jupiter's famous storm the Great Red Spot was also captured like never before by using color filters. The image reveals the turbulent nature of the giant storm plus large white spots that surround it as well as giving us a closer look at Jupiter's marble-like atmosphere. Voyager 1 also observed the Jupiter's thin ring system which can be seen as a faint band. But it wasn't just a Jupiter that Voyager 1 studied, many of the gas planets mysterious moons were also photographed such as the volcanic moon Io and it's hellish surface revealing ancient volcanic mountains. Io was the first world beyond Earth where active volcanism had been observed the huge plume can be seen silhouetted against the darkness of space on the outer edge of the moon by using different camera filters the close-up image also shows the moon's rich colors which are believed to be as a result of allotropes and sulfur compounds while the dark spots may be from lava flows or volcanic craters other satellites such as Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede also exposed its strained surface features for the first time revealing huge ridges grooves and impact craters that are spread across its icy thick crust. after months of studying Jupiter and its moons Voyager 1 eventually completed its flyby in early April 1979 and continued on to the second largest gas planet in our solar system.
nearly 20 months later on the 9th of November 1980 Voyager 1 finally reached the ringed world Saturn this blurred image shows Saturn's dark and light bands of rotating clouds it's huge magnificence ringlets but also two of the gas giants mysterious moons during the flyby Voyager 1 also encountered Saturn's largest moon Titan the enhanced photograph reveals Titans hazy nitrogen-rich atmosphere which led scientists to theorized that seas of liquid methane and ethane might exist on the moon's surface which was later confirmed by the Cassini mission.
Voyager 1 collected colossal amounts of data and discovered three previously unknown moons during its flyby but from this point onwards its primary mission was complete and the spacecraft would never come close to another astronomical object again but at a distance of about four billion miles away Voyager 1 was commanded by NASA at the request of the astronomer Carl Sagan to point it camera back towards the Sun one last time in February 1990 the spacecraft captured a series of images that became known as the solar system family portrait. These images revealed Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. It is the first ever portrait of our solar system as seen from the outside. The famous photograph of Earth was known as the pale blue dot and captures our planet as a tiny blue dot. After all of the images were transmitted back to Earth engineers turned off the spacecraft's cameras so that it could power other instruments as it continued on its journey into the unknown. Then on the 16th of December 2004, 24 long years after its Saturn encounter Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock, a region where solar wind abruptly slows down and heats up as it encounters interstellar wind. Here the spacecraft would have to travel through a turbulent area known as the heliosheath which is the outer shell of a bubble of charged particles around the solar system. Voyager 1 finally became the first human-made object to cross the threshold of interstellar space on the 25th of August 2012. The incredible spacecraft that was only built to last five years is still collecting data thirteen point five billion miles away from the Sun, detecting the full intensity of cosmic rays beyond our solar system. According to NASA, the spacecraft will have enough energy to power its instruments until 2021 then it will pass through interstellar space until it eventually comes within 1.7 light-years of a star in the Ursa Minor constellation around 40,000 years from now.