Voyager 1

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a 722-kilogram (1,590 lb) space probe launched by the US space agency, NASA, on September 5, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and interstellar medium. Operating for 36 years and 8 days as of 13 September 2013, the spacecraft communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of about 125 AU from the Sun as of August 2013[update], it is the farthest man-made object from Earth. On September 12, 2013 NASA announced that Voyager 1 had entered a previously unstudied region of space known as interstellar space on August 25, 2012, making it the first man-made object to do so. As of 2013[update], the probe was moving with a relative velocity to the Sun of 17 kilometres per second (11 mi/s). The amount of power available to the probe has decreased over time, and will no longer be able to power any single instrument by 2025.