Voyager I is nearing a milestone. She was launched on September 5, 1977 and is 10.8 billion miles from home and about to leave the solar system after traveling for 33 years. She is still in touch with Earth even though the radio messages take about 16 hours one way at the speed of light. She finished her original mission of surveying the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in 1989 then headed toward deep space between the stars in the direction of the center of our galaxy. She's by far the fastest object we've ever launched - moving I think about 40,000 mph - but still an insignificant fraction of lightspeed. Since the nearest star is nearly 30 trillion miles away I think I've read it would take her about 80,000 years to make it that far. It will be many millions of years to the center of the galaxy.
Aren't you glad you tuned in? :)
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