The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which was launched less than a month after the death of Elvis Presley in 1977, has officially left the solar system. Looks like it checked out in late August of last year. It stopped picking up radiation trapped in the outer reaches of the sun's magnetic field, and started picking up consistent galactic radiation instead. It's the first man-made object to leave our solar system.

The exciting thing is, we're not sure yet exactly where it's gone.

I mean, yeah. We know that it's about 18 billion kilometres away from us (about 11 billion miles). We know that it's about 122 times farther from the sun than the Earth is, and three times farther than Pluto. It is a Long Ways Away. But apparently we're not sure if it's some sort of empty interstellar space, or if it's in a new type of zone beyond the heliosphere that we don't understand yet. Brand new data is coming in and making scientists giggle and do little dances.

But the real question is, how long will it take until Voyager is given consciousness as a machine entity and returns as V'ger to seek its creator?

Edit: NASA ... disagrees? There's some confusion. See my post below for more.