Contemporánea Condeduque, a cultural space in Madrid, will host an exhibition featuring a full-scale model of the Voyager 1 spacecraft from 3 to 18 November. This exhibition marks the upcoming 50th anniversary of the spacecraft's launch.
The display serves as a prelude to the festival ‘A un día luz. Ciencia y música para la sonda Voyager 1’, which will include discussions and two concerts on 18 November. This date is significant as it marks the moment when Voyager 1 will be one light day away from Earth, a distance of nearly 25.9 billion kilometres—four times the distance from Earth to Pluto.
Launched by NASA in 1977, Voyager 1 explored the outer planets of the Solar System and ventured into interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. In 1990, it captured an iconic image of Earth as a tiny pale blue dot, and in 2012, it crossed the heliopause, the boundary where solar wind pressure is no longer able to push back against the pressure of interstellar medium.
As it continues to drift further into space, Voyager 1 carries a golden record containing sounds, music, and images representing various cultures from around the world. Over time, the Voyager missions have become the most significant unmanned missions in history, transforming previously insignificant points of light in the sky into remarkable worlds that exceeded human imagination.
Even 50 years after its launch, Voyager 1 continues to send back data from beyond the Solar System, despite the outdated technology of its era. The exhibition has been five years in the making by the Astronomy Classroom in Armilla, Granada, and aims to pay tribute to the pioneering spirit of space exploration. The full-scale model was constructed using wood, plastic, cardboard, PVC, polypropylene, and various recycled materials, including several kilograms of screws and fittings.
Currently, the only other full-scale model of a Voyager spacecraft can be found at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., while another model built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was last exhibited in 2018.
