Out at the eerily still edge of our solar system, where the solar winds have calmed, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is sailing across the cosmic doldrums and preparing to punch through the boundary between the part of the universe that falls under our sun's control and the part that does not.
And when the spacecraft -- launched along with its twin, Voyager 2, in 1977 -- crosses the boundary of our solar system, a hard-to-pinpoint demarcation known as the heliopause, it will be the first man-made creation to send back information from interstellar space.