“By today’s standards, the spacecraft’s technology is laughable: it carries an 8-track tape recorder and computers with one-240,000th the memory of a low-end iPhone. When it left Earth 36 years ago, it was designed as a four-year mission to Saturn, and everything after that was gravy.” And yet, NASA’s Voyager 1 keeps going and going. In fact, it exited the solar system and is currently moving away from Earth at about 38,000 mph.

+ The duration of Jonathan Trappe’s journey into the skies didn’t quite match that of Voyager 1. His planned trip across the Atlantic ended after just twelve hours. But that’s not all that bad when you consider he was — inspired by the movie Up — being carried by a bunch of helium balloons.