The Mrs. and I were reminiscing the other day about Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Veeger (a/k/a V'Ger a/k/a Voyager 1) requiring the information.

I vaguely recalled seeing something about Voyager in the news recently. Sure enough, it's still out there, on the edge of our solar system, still acquiring and sending information*...

NASA VOYAGER 1 ENCOUNTERS NEW REGION IN DEEP SPACE

Dec. 3, 2012: NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space.

Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. This connection allows lower-energy charged particles that originate from inside our heliosphere -- or the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself -- to zoom out and allows higher-energy particles from outside to stream in.

"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager."

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977. At least one of the spacecraft has visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object, about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the sun. The signal from Voyager 1 takes approximately 17 hours to travel to Earth. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated spacecraft, is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun.

JPL Voyager Mission Page

NASA Voyager Mission Page

(*I suppose technically it is still sending data, which is interpreted by JPL scientists to create knowledge and information.)