The journey to the planets
Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1980), sending back the first detailed images of their moons. It then continued on out of the Solar System. In 1990, at the request of astronomer Carl Sagan, it turned around and photographed Earth from a distance of about 6 billion kilometres. That produced the famous photo known as the Pale Blue Dot.
Technology from the 1970s
The probe's computers have about 70 kilobytes of memory, less than a single photo on a phone. Its power comes from a radioisotope generator whose output drops a little every year, so engineers keep switching off instruments and heaters to compensate. The transmitter puts out about 23 watts, roughly the power of a dim light bulb, yet the huge antennas of the Deep Space Network can still pick it up.
A repair from a distance
In late 2023 Voyager started sending back nonsense data. Engineers found that a chip in its memory had failed, and in 2024 they rewrote the software to route around the faulty spot. Every command took more than 22 hours to reach the probe at the speed of light, and the reply took just as long to come back.
The Golden Record
Onboard is a gold-plated record carrying sounds and images of Earth, greetings in 55 languages, and music ranging from Bach to Chuck Berry. It's meant for any extraterrestrials who might one day find the probe.