Voyager 1 left Earth 47 years ago. It is the farthest human-made object. It is also, astronomically speaking, still in the driveway.
Voyager 1 launched in 1977. It flew past Jupiter and Saturn. It is now about 24 billion kilometers from Earth. Radio signals take 22 hours to reach it. It crossed into interstellar space in 2012. That sounds impressive. It is not. It has not even reached the outer edge of the Sun's gravitational influence. The Oort Cloud, the shell of comets surrounding the Solar System, starts at about 300 billion kilometers. Voyager 1 will not reach it for another 300 years.
The nearest star is Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light-years away. That is 40 trillion kilometers. Voyager 1 is moving at 61,000 km/h. At that speed, it would take 75,000 years to get there. It has not sent us a single photo from another star because it will not reach another star for 75 millennia. It will outlast humans as we know them.
We have sent five objects on escape trajectories: Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons. All five are tiny. All five are now drifting. None will reach another star. They are bottles thrown into an ocean and thrown back. The galaxy is too big for us.
Voyager 1 still sends data. Its power source decays by about 4 watts per year. In 2025, NASA will start shutting down instruments to save power. By 2036, it will go silent. It will drift for eternity, carrying a golden record with the sounds of Earth. No one will find it. The void is that empty.
Yes, barely. It still sends data. But its radioisotope power generator is decaying. NASA turns off instruments one by one. It will go dark around 2036. After that, it drifts silently forever.
Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in 2012, where the Sun's solar wind stops and interstellar plasma begins. That was at 121 AU (18 billion km). But it is still inside the Oort Cloud. True interstellar space, where the Sun's gravity no longer dominates, is another 300 years away.
Not in any meaningful sense. It will pass within 1.7 light-years of a star called AC+79 3888 in about 40,000 years. By then it will be dead. It will just drift through that star's system like a speck of dust. No one will know.
A 12-inch gold-plated copper disk on Voyager 1 and 2. It contains sounds of Earth: rain, thunder, whales, a baby crying, Chuck Berry. It has instructions on how to play it. If an alien ever finds it, they will hear 1970s Earth. They will be underwhelmed.