Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space

We are an amazing species. Even with our insanities we are capable of such extraordinary greatness.

Read a short piece by Carolyn Porco, who was on the Voyager imaging team and is in charge of the imaging team of the Cassini spacecraft.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24072587

What a wonderful, exciting, even if occasionally a little scary, time to be alive.

Space is big. After 36 years in space, travelling at more than 60,000 km per hour (more than 16 km every second), now at the incomprehensible distance of almost 19 billion km (19,000,000,000 km), Voyager 1 has now left our solar system and entered interstellar space. Voyager 2 is "only" a bit over 15 billion km away from us. Vast though these distances are, the two voyager spacecraft will take about 40,000 years to get anywhere near another solar system. We are kind of isolated.

Here is more information about the two fascinating Voyager spacecraft and the wonderful, big-thinking, optimistic geniuses who created them, not only to send us back a vast flood of knowledge, but to act as potential ambassadors to other intelligent life that just might be out there:
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

You can see and listen to many of the pictures and sounds on the golden record accompanying them.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html
(Unfortunately, loony copyright restrictions prevent Earthlings hearing some of what aliens can.)