08/31/2026
A 1977 machine with less computing power than your car key is now 25 billion kilometers from home, and still calling.
Voyager 1 already punched through the heliopause in 2012, the boundary where the Sun's wind stops and interstellar space begins. No human-made object had ever done that.
Now it's heading for the next line. The Oort Cloud, that vast shell of icy debris wrapped around our solar system. It won't arrive for roughly 300 years, and it would need about 30,000 more to get through.
Its plutonium power supply dies sometime in the 2030s. Engineers keep shutting off instruments one by one to buy months.
Then it goes quiet and keeps going anyway. Carrying a golden record nobody may ever play.
