Where is Voyager 1? To get to that question, we must first settle on where it has been. Originally known as Mariner 11, Voyager 1 was launched on September 5th, ironically 12 days after the launch of its sister satellite Voyager 2. Nevertheless, Voyager 1 still reached Jupiter in Saturn 1st. The spacecraft proved to be beneficial to researchers, revealing Iosal cancactivity, Jupiter's rings, and the curious atmosphere of Titan. While Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune, Voyager 1's tourists to go to Titan cost it the opportunity to visit Pluto. Undeterred, NASA decided it was time to end the planetary mission and begin the interstellar mission, focused on getting out of the solar system. In the 30 years since then, Voyager 1 has become the farthest thing that mankind has sent into space. It has since passed the termination shock, a region of the heliosphere where the solar wind reduces substantially, and since then entered the outer layer of our solar system, the heliosheet. Located about 120 astronomical units, or 10 billion miles away, if Voyager 1 were to send a message right now, it would take scientists here 33 hours to receive it. As of December 5th, 2011, Voyager's current location is a stagnation region of the heliosheet, where the solar wind has come to a practical stop. This cosmic purgatory has unveiled enormous bubbles created by the collision between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. Voyager continues to study the outer region of our solar system until about 2014, when it is finally projected to leave the solar system for good by crossing the heliopods. So right now you're saying, hold on, it can't be that easy, and truth is, you're right. The heliopods may have a big surprise known to us as the bow shock. A region of intense turbulence caused once again by the full-on collision of the solar wind and the interstellar medium. Such turbulence could jeopardize a satellite in mission completely. If Voyager does make it through, its next challenge would be to collect as much data as possible before it shuts down its data recording system in about 2015. These powercast trains will eventually shut down the entire satellite by 2030, leaving Voyager as a powerless, lonely piece of metal out in the real world. But nevertheless, Voyager 1 will be a very important lonely piece of powerless metal. Included with the spacecraft is a package containing pictures and sounds of Earth. The hope is that either alien, intelligent life or future humans find Voyager, and therefore learn about the things that we did on Earth in the 1970s. While it may not produce results, it is a fitting end to perhaps the greatest space for a man has ever made.