NASA's Voyager 1 reaches outskirts of the solar system (photos)

As NASA's robotic space probe Voyager 1 prepared for launch in August 1977 on a mission to locate and study the boundaries of our solar system, researchers could only imagine the scope of the project's success.

Since its launch on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 has traveled more than 10.8 billion miles, photographing some of the most spectacular and iconic images of our solar system's planets and moons, and returning stunning pictures of our very own home planet.

Here, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, encapsulated in a Centaur Standard Shroud, is hoisted up the gantry to be mated with its Titan-Centaur launch vehicle at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Moving at a speed of 10.5 miles per second, the equivalent of more than 38,000 miles per hour, Voyager 1 is now the most distant man-made object from Earth, and last week, after a 33-year journey, it reached the outer limits of our solar system.

In a series of messages and sounds of Earth intended as greetings for any extraterrestrial beings the spacecraft might encounter during its decades-long sojourn through outer space, NASA launched Voyager carrying 12-inch gold-plated copper discs.

Containing greetings in 60 languages with samples of music and natural sounds of Earth's natural world, technician John Casani displays the "Sounds of Earth" recording before its installation on the Voyager spacecraft.

For years, Voyager 1 has sent back stunning imagery from the distant corners of our solar system, transmitting information via NASA's Deep Space Network, an international network of large antennas and communication facilities that support interplanetary spacecraft missions.

Voyager 1 captured this iconic image of a crescent-shaped Earth and moon on September 18, 1977.

This was the first time Earth and its moon were photographed together in a single image, captured by Voyager 1 when it was 7.25 million miles from Earth.

By February 1990, when these images were taken, Voyager 1 was farther from the sun than Pluto, and approximately 4 billion miles from Earth.

These pictures were the first ever taken of our solar system's planets from beyond their orbit.

Voyager 1 snapped this image of Saturn's moon Mimas in November 1980.

One of the most famous images ever snapped by Voyager 1, taken on June 6, 1990, was dubbed the "pale blue dot," depicting Earth on a scale never before seen.

Of the "pale blue dot," astronomer Carl Sagan said:

"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

In March of 1979 as Voyager 1 cruised by Jupiter, the spacecraft captured photos of the planet's four largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

Although Jupiter has 63 moons in all, these four large Galilean satellites are the largest, with diameters of around 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers, and were discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei.

The moons, shown in relative size to each other, were the first objects found to orbit a body other than the Earth or sun.

Looking across the edge of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, from a distance of about 22,000 kilometers, Voyager captured this brilliant orange and blue image of the hazy Titan atmosphere on November 12, 1980.

A picture of Jupiter's Great Red Spot taken by Voyager 1 in February 1979.

The crinkly, wavy shape of one of Saturn's narrowest rings when NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn was a surprise to NASA.

The image on the left from Voyager 1 was released on November 12, 1980, while the image on the right shows a closer view of the same F ring in a photograph shot by the Cassini spacecraft on April 13, 2005.

The moon Pandora can be seen to the left of the ring, and the moon Prometheus is to the right of the ring.

A close view of Jupiter's moon Callisto, taken by Voyager 1 on March 6, 1979, at an altitude of just 350,000 kilometers.

From Voyager's great distance, more than 4 billion miles from Earth, our planet is a mere point of light.

Look closely for the tiny white speck in the right-most strip of color: that's us.