Right now, somewhere out there in the darkness of space, billions of kilometres away, two craft made from nothing more than glass reinforced graphite and each little bigger than a VW Beetle, are speeding away from us at over 61 000km/h into the unknown. At just over 45 years now, theirs has become one of the most legendary explorations ever undertaken by humankind.

In a strange way, the two crafts’ journeys have spanned nearly my entire life. When I arrived in this world on September 5, 1978, Voyager 1 was exactly one year into its mission and about six months away from its first objective, Jupiter.