1 For thousands of year, we have been looking at the sky. We have studied other planets and tried to understand them. But to learn more about the planets in our solar system, we have to get closer to them. In September 1977, America sent Voyager 1 into space to get a closer look other planets. Voyager 1 has been travelling through space ever since and has flown past a number of planets in our solar system. Now, it is nearly 17 billion kilometers from the Earth!
2 Voyager 1 is a space probe. It doesn’t carry any people, but it does carry a lot of equipment. It sends information and pictures back from other planets by radio. Since it left Earth, it has sent a lot of information and pictures! Scientists study the information and pictures Voyager 1 send and are able to learn about the other planets. Voyager 1’s mission was to fly past Jupiter and Saturn. It flew past Jupiter in January 1979, and Saturn in November 1980. But Voyager 1 didn’t stop there.
3 Voyager 1 is flying further into space. It is travelling at about 520 million kilometers a year. In 2007 it entered the heliosheath, the outer part of the solar system. Vayager 1 sent information about the heliosheath back to Earth. The pictures took about fourteen hours to get here! Voyager 1 has enough power to send information back to Earth until the year 2020. One day it may go to other solar systems and other planet. It could be flying through space for thousands of years!