Voyager at the Edge of Solar System - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.

The spacecraft Voyager 1, launched by NASA in September 1977, is celebrating its 35th year in space, and scientists say that it could be getting close to reaching the outside of our solar system. At a distance of over 11 billion miles from Earth, transmissions from Voyager 1 take up to 16 hours to reach the scientists at NASA. No man made object has ever traveled outside the boundary of our solar system, but Voyager 1 has been detecting decreasing levels of low energy particles from inside our solar system and an increase in higher energy particles from outside.

Regarding how soon the spacecraft will reach the edge, Ed Stone, a scientist working on the Voyager project said: "I can't tell you whether it's days, months or years… From a science point of view, there is so much that we're learning that we had no way of really understanding before Voyager."

Although the technology used on Voyager 1 is dated, it has a disk onboard with images and sounds chosen by a committee led by the late Dr. Carl Sagan to represent life on Earth in case Voyager encountered intelligent life in space.