One minute read. Written by Saina Doval – a grade 4 student.

In 1977 NASA – the American space agency – launched two space missions called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were sent into space to study the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, but they kept going on, and are still in space – 43 years later!

The twin missions are still sending very useful scientific data to Earth. No other probe (as the mission to space is sometimes called) has sent close-up pictures like Voyager 2.

What’s interesting is that the Voyagers are carrying two records (12-inch gold plated copper disk) that contain sounds and images of the Earth – the idea is to show life and culture on Earth, so in case there’s any extraterrestrial life that exists in space, they will get to know all about Earth with this record! It is something like a time capsule.

This is the message on it:

“This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe.“

Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. It helped the United States of America discover volcanoes on Jupiter and rings in Saturn.

Voyager 2 discovered around 14 moons on Jupiter. On Uranus, together, they have found 10 moons and 2 rings. The voyagers are far beyond any space debris or asteroid in the space outside our solar system and are hence beyond any collision. They keep on sending different and clear pictures of Jupiter and Saturn to earth. They are one of the only space probes till date to fly across Neptune. These Voyagers were made in the Jet Proplusion laboratory in California and are not expected to come back for a few more years.

Their speed is 57,890 km per hour. Voyager 2 is at least 17.2 billion kilometres away from Earth.

Written by Saina Doval