Voyager 1

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft were launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and are currently traveling near the outer reaches of the solar system. Voyager 1 is nearly 10 BILLION miles from Earth and still sending information back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Even at the speed of light however, it takes an incredibly long time to receive data from Voyager 1. One bit of information takes over 14 hours to travel back to the Earth. The transmission of data from Voyager 1 occurs at only 160 bits per second. In comparison, most home computers today transmit and receive data at either 14,400 or 28,800 bits per second. If you were attempting to read this web page from Voyager 1, you could be waiting over 14 hours for it to download to your computer. (And you thought YOUR modem was slow) In the time it has taken you to read this web page, Voyager 1 has traveled approximately another 487 miles further from the Earth. View the current Voyager status report from NASA.

At the Speed of Light
is brought to you by the good folks at
Advanced Digital Research
copyright © 1997
All Rights Reserved