Perhaps the greatest adventure of the Voyager program is yet to come. Voyager 1 is 9.7 billion miles from Earth, farther than any human-made object has ever traveled. In 2004, it crossed the heliosphere where solar winds slow as they hit the thin gas that fills the void between the stars. What's next for Voyager? Stargazers who were able to last through the entire movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, may already know.

Spoiler: In the movie, Voyager flew into a black hole and was discovered by mechanical life forms who gave it their artificial intelligence and a cloud-like ship. It was called V'ger after the "oy" on its name plate was obscured. V'ger threatened to remove humans from Earth but Kirk and Spock outwit it and save the planet.