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NASA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS An artist's rendering shows NASA's Voyager 1, which is now the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space more than three decades after launching from Earth.


Thirty-six years after it rocketed away from Earth, the plutonium-powered spacecraft has escaped the sun's influence and is now cruising 11.5 billion miles away in interstellar space, or the vast, cold emptiness between the stars, NASA said Thursday.



"We made it," said an ecstatic Ed Stone, the mission's chief scientist, who waited decades for this moment.

NASA celebrated by playing the "Star Trek" theme at a news conference in Washington.



It will study exotic particles and other phenomena and will radio the data back to Earth, where the Voyager team awaits the starship's discoveries. It takes about 17 hours for its signal to reach Earth.







The Voyager team patiently waited for a change in magnetic field direction - thought to be the telltale sign of a cosmic border crossing.

But in the meantime, a chance solar eruption that shook Voyager 1 last spring provided the scientists with the data they needed, convincing them the boundary had been crossed in August of last year.


Not everyone is on board.



Until then, Voyager 1 is "the little spacecraft that could," said mission project manager Suzanne Dodd of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We keep on going."