This week marks 48 years since the Sept. 5, 1977, launch of NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to study Jupiter and Saturn up close. Nearly a half-century later, Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 are still exploring, only now they’re in the outer reaches of our solar system.
To celebrate, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is sharing an archival video of the June 6, 1990, press conference following the conclusion of the mission’s planetary explorations. In the briefing, mission representatives reveal Voyager’s “Solar System Family Portrait,” a mosaic comprising images of six of the solar system’s eight planets, taken by Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, when the spacecraft was beyond the orbit of Neptune — about 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun.