Its aim is to help us understand the past and future of the universe.

You may have heard of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Department of Energy. We reported on the project all the way back in 2016 when the team of scientists launched 5,000 small robots into space to help develop the first map of the universe beyond earth.

Then, in 2017, we reported how the project had created a 3D map of our galaxy’s space dust. The map was successful at plotting each individual dust that exists in our galaxy in order to clear up the deep space view and measure the accelerating expansion rate of the universe.

Now, DESI has revealed that it has finally created the largest and most detailed map of the universe ever. As impressive as this achievement is, DESI notes that it’s only 10% done with its five-year mission.

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The project is called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and it’s run by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Department of Energy.

There a spacecraft so far away in space it has become the first humanmade object to reach interstellar space. It is traveling out there among the stars, far from Earth, far from home. Voyager 1 is set to never return to our star system, let alone Earth. Its mission; to explore the most distant reaches of space.

September 5, 2020, marked 43 since NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral. In 2012, the probe became the first object to enter an uncharted, never-before-seen region of space; interstellar space. More precisely, on August 25, 2012, at 122 astronomical units, the probe left the so-called heliopause, and so became the first to reach interstellar space.

Although it has made history and has nothing left to prove, the 722 kg robotic probe is still operational today, continuing its extended mission of locating and studying the limits of the solar system, including the Kuiper belt and beyond, as well as exploring immediate interstellar space, until one day, it runs out of fuel and waves back to Earth, one more time.