Active · Active
NASA's Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn before becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, where its extended mission continues.
- Destinations
- Launch vehicle
- Titan IIIE-Centaur
- Launch site
- Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 41
- Countries
- United States
- Mission types
- Flyby, Interstellar
Chronology
Mission timeline
Milestone
Entered interstellar space
Mission architecture
Vehicles
Trajectory record
Precise trajectory
Sun-centred J2000 states sampled offline from NASA/JPL NAIF SPICE kernels with geometric (NONE) aberration correction. The merged long-arc cruise solution is overridden at each flyby by the encounter-specific reconstructed navigation kernels, and DE440s is furnished last so planetary positions match the committed body ephemerides. Sampling is weekly during cruise and tightens to 60 s within six hours of each closest approach. The record begins at the kernel's first tracked state, about 63 minutes after launch. States after the 1980 Saturn encounter are long-term propagation of the last reconstructed solution rather than tracked navigation data. The computed Saturn closest approach of 184,141 km sits 159 km below the 184,300 km published by the Planetary Data System; the reconstructed navigation kernel is followed here and the difference is recorded rather than reconciled. The Titan encounter is measured against Titan's own centre rather than the Saturn system barycentre, which lies about 1.2 million kilometres away, so its barycentre and centre distances are the same quantity. Its published figure needed a judgement the Saturn one did not. The same Planetary Data System catalogue states in words that its Saturn distance is measured from the centre of Saturn; for Titan it gives 6,490 km in a satellite table under a column headed only Closest Approach Distance, with no statement of where the distance is measured from. Titan's radius is 2,575 km, so a distance to its centre and a height above its surface are two different claims rather than a rounding difference, and no source found here says which is meant. Reading the figure as centre-relative is therefore this catalog's own conclusion rather than a published label. It was settled by measurement: the reconstructed navigation kernel puts the spacecraft 6,498 km from Titan's centre, 8 km from the published figure, where reading it as a height above the surface would require that same kernel to be wrong by 2,567 km.
Provenance
Sources
Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.
Data verified through September 1, 2026
- Voyager 1 reconstructed trajectory kernels (merged cruise arc and encounter solutions) — NAIFSpice · Supports: mission claims · trajectory claims
- Voyager 1 — NASAMission page · Supports: mission claims · event claims
- Voyager mission catalogue (MISSION.CAT), Planetary Data System Ring-Moon Systems Node — NASAArchive · Supports: mission claims · trajectory claims
- Voyager 1 Encounter with the Saturnian System (Stone and Miner, Science, 1981) — OTHERPaper · Supports: mission claims · trajectory claims
- Planet Sizes and Locations in Our Solar System — NASAOther · Supports: destination/body context
- Huygens Probe — NASAMission page · Supports: destination/body context
- Cassini-Huygens factsheet — ESAMission page · Supports: destination/body context