When it does. It will be the first human constructed space craft to travel out into interstellar space. Traversing the vast, unimaginably empty and massive, void between stars. Pretty kool.
Voyager was launched on September 5 1977, with it's mission being to study Jupiter and Saturn, then go on towards the outer solar system and out into interstellar space. And it's done a remarkable job. Returning some of the most iconic images of the gas giants and their moons and providing invaluable information about the two systems.
Now it is reaching a point in its journey where the flow of particles from outside our solar system seems to be getting the upper hand over the particles streaming out from the sun. You can imagine it like a river flowing into the sea. At the mouth of the river there is only the fresh water flowing out. But the further out into the sea you go the more the salt water takes over. Until, eventually all the you can detect is the ocean. Where the two flows meet and battle it out marks the Heliopause. Which is the edge of the Heliosphere (the bubble around our star that marks out its influence in space). Once Voyager passes through the Heliopause it will then be in installer space. Voyager 1 is is currently more than 17.8 billion kilometers from earth and moving at a (relative) speed of 17km/s. It takes 16 hours and 38 Minutes (on average) just for the data to get from the there to here.
It seems amazing to me that it is still functioning so well after all this time. The power source is expected to provide usable power up until 2025. So if the instruments keep functioning, we can expect to learn plenty of interesting things about the space environment beyond the influence of our sun.
O, and if you were wondering how long it will be before voyager 1 reaches another star. Well, roughly 73,600 years. I don't think I'll stick around for that.
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