NASA’s Voyager 1 Probe Turns 45 Today

Voyager 1: 45 years and counting. Photo: Nasa/Hulton Archive (Getty Images)

What were you up to on September 5th 1977? On that day, exactly 45 years ago today, those hardworking engineers at NASA were out there launching one of the American space agency’s most famous probes: Voyager 1.

Confusingly launched just after its sibling, Voyager 2, the probe reaches the impressive milestone of 45 years in space today. Over that span of time, Voyager 1 has traveled from Florida across the cosmos and out into interstellar space. In fact, it’s now more than 14 billion miles away from Earth. If you wanted to put 14 billion miles on your car, you’d have to drive every last mile of paved road on earth, every single day, for a full year.

But Voyager 1 isn’t just about getting as far away from Florida as possible. In fact, it’s made some pretty important discoveries over its 45-year mission. So, to honor the probe’s big day, we rounded up some of the most interesting facts and discoveries made by Voyager 1 since it launched.