Voyager 1 has left our the solar system folks, never to return home again. According to Geeks Are Sexy (you bet we are), Voyager 1 has crossed the heliopause into the nearby interstellar plasma. That’s basically saying the satellite has finally moved out of Earth’s solar system and into space unknown. And at a whopping 12 billion miles away from Earth, it is so far away that our Sun has little to no effect on it any longer.

Since the launch of Voyager 1 back in September 5, 1977, a satellite designed by NASA to monitor Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the satellite has so far traveled roughly 12 billion miles in space. This is the first time any single object launched by NASA, and the human race, has traveled these many miles, and also the first time anything from Earth managed to travel beyond our solar system. This is history in the making right here, so you should be very excited.

The next task for Voyager 1 is to make its way to another solar system, however; this won’t happen until the next 40,000 years. Unfortunately, if humans are not extinct by that moment, we won’t be able to collect data from Voyager 1 regarding the new solar system since its plutonium power source is expected to run out in the next 10 years.

But that’s OK because Voyager 1 is packed with images of human culture, animal sounds and recorded greetings in over 56 languages. Such a thing was put in place just in case intelligent extraterrestrial life managed to come across Voyager 1 in the cosmos. Although, it makes me wonder: what if, after viewing all the gifts we sent them, they decide that they want to take over our cuddly little planet?

I think we’re so begging for an alien invasion, but you see, that’s fine because as long we continue to play Halo games and watch Independence Day over and over again, ain’t no alien gonna wipe us out homeboy.

[via Science Mag, Geeks Are Sexy]