What is the furthest man made satellite from Earth and how far away is it?

1 Answer
Mar 23, 2016

Voyager 1 and 2 are both now in Interstellar space, around 84-94 AU.

Explanation:

The voyager 1 and 2 research satellites were both launched in 1977. They made several trips around the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They both crossed the Terminal Shock marker (one of the many boundaries that define the edge of the solar system) in 2004 and 2007
See: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline.html

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ image source here

The Voyager spacecraft also contained a bunch of information about us, like what we look like (see pic) in case any aliens should ever find the spacecraft!

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html image source here

The Voyager spacecraft series was also immortalized in a 1979 Star Trek Movie where an alien craft V'Ger is about to trash Earth. In the movie, V'Ger was a modified Voyager 6 spacecraft that aliens found and supped up!