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Answer by Brian-Roemmele, Alchemist & Metaphysician
The farthest human-made object is also the fastest human-made object.
Cast into space on September 5, 1977, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. And mounted on a Titan IIIE/Centaur launch vehicle, Voyager-1 is now the farthest human-made object from Earth at 17,922,521,702 km (119.80465777 au). It takes light about 16 Hours and 10 minutes to reach Earth From Voyager-1. It is also traveling away from both the Earth and the Sun at a relative speed faster than any human-made object, at a velocity of 17,087 m/s (38,200 mph, 61,400 km/h).
At current velocity and trajectory Voyager-1 will arrive at Proxima Centaur in 73,600 years on the way and in about 40,000 years it will pass to about 1.6 light years of the Star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. At current velocity It takes Voyager-1 14,000 years to travel one light year.
From Earth Voyager-1 is located at 12.44° declination and 17.163 hours right ascension, and 34.9° of ecliptic latitude. This puts in the constellation Ophiuchus which is the apparent center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The current distance Voyager-1 is calculated in realtime from NASA here
Message In A Bottle
If per chance future explorers discover Voyager-1, there is a "message in a bottle" that humanity has casted hopefully in to space, the Voyager Golden Record.
Attached to the outer body of Voyager-1 is a Gold Record Disc as a monumental notice to the future. Created before the era of the personal computer, the best minds at NASA Encoded on the disk 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals, 90-minute selection of music including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic musical selections, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty five languages.
"Dark was the night" by Blind Willie Johnson
The record contains spoken greetings, in Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect.
Greetings in fifty five languages.
The record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog format. The remainder of the record is in analog audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute.
1970's NASA Technology, Still Working
Voyager-1 is still operational even with it's 1970s era technology. Most of the experiments have been disabled. The radioactive power plant is scheduled to continue producing power for at least another 5 years, but it could well last another decade.
Voyager-1 still sends back data to the 3 tracking facilities just to let us know the tiny transmitter is still operational. The Voyager Interstellar Mission is currently funded for the next few years.
Voyager 1's Valentine Gift To Humanity, The Family Portrait
On Feb. 14, 1990 Voyager 1, on it's way out of the Solar System, turned back around one last time and took 60 pictures from a distance of about 4 billion miles with a camera that is far less powerful than one found in even the most modest cell phone. Each individual pixel took five painstaking hours to arrive at Earth. I think this may be one of the most powerful images in human history.
A 4 Billion Mile Perspective
Voyager-1 is our family's most intrepid explorer extending our journey over the largest mountain we have thus far scaled, sending back news and tales of it's very long and lonely trek.
From 4 Billion miles away the inner planets are huddled around the Sun for warmth much like how our ancient family found refuge at a camp fire at night. From 4 Billion miles away Voyager 1 cannot detect any of the differences between water and land, Country Lines or Cultural lines nor can it detect the marginal differences of the entirety of the human population of Earth and it's other inhabitants. From 4 Billion miles away, not only our planet, but the entire Solar System looks like one extended family making its way through the dark.
If through human, non human or natural processes, humanity does not survive, our space probes like Voyager-1 will stand as a testament for millions of years making one very profound statement:
For at least one moment in our short history we over came astounding obstacles and almost insurmountable odds, and projected our inherent curiosity and need for discovery in to the universe.
We were here.