The most distant object built by humans, Voyager 1 was launched on 5 September 1977 and made it to interstellar space on 25 August 2012 after years of sending back vital data about our galaxy. It continued to communicate with Earth until late last year, when a glitch saw it send back "gibberish code", according to NASA.

Incredibly, NASA scientists managed to fix the problem and after sending a "poke" across space, Voyager 1 is once again returning usable data. Former astronaut Chris Hadfield had perhaps the best take on the remarkable repair job: "Imagine a computer chip fails in your 1977 vehicle. Now imagine it’s in interstellar space, 15bn miles away".

Like its twin, Voyager 1 is poised to wander interstellar space, whizzing by the star Gliese 445 in about 40,000 years from now.

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