One day, somewhere beyond the planets, a carrier tone will fail to rise from the background hiss. Engineers on Earth will listen again. They will check the Deep Space Network, calculate the spacecraft’s position and wait through the long hours required for a command to cross the darkness. Eventually there will be no practical doubt: [...]
Updated August 22, 2026: Voyager 1 did not merely approach interstellar space. It crossed the heliopause on August 25, 2012, and is still returning data from beyond the Sun’s protective bubble. This article has been completely revised to reflect what happened and the spacecraft’s current status. Somewhere beyond every planet, far past Pluto and the [...]