Opinion

Mankind’s stellar achievement

NASA has confirmed that its space probe Voyager 1, after a 36-year, 11.5-billion-mile journey, has become the first manmade object to leave our solar system and enter the cold and immense void of what is truly outer space.

Voyager 1’s primary mission was a photographic and scientific fly-by of Jupiter and Saturn. If the probe still was functioning, it was to go on to Pluto, which it did.

Voyager was launched in 1977 — the same year the first “Star Wars” was released — and still relies on 1970s technology.

When NASA made its announcement to the small Voyager support staff, the agency played the theme from “Star Trek” with its voiceover directive “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

And that mission involves its next space rendezvous with a dwarf star in the constellation Camelopardalis — in 40,000 years.

But the precedent-setting probe had better hurry. Voyager 2 is only about three years behind it in hitting interstellar space.