Mark November 2026 on your calendar because it has special significance for space science. By then, Voyager 1 will have completed the journey that light would take in just one day, after almost 50 years of continuous movement through space. The question now is how far this legendary mission can still go.
Over the past months, Voyager 1 has once again found itself in the spotlight. The most distant spacecraft ever built by man faced serious technical problems, including a period when communication with Earth was almost non-existent. NASA engineers were able to restore the connection, and in a remarkable technical feat, they reactivated the thrusters, which had been considered unusable for more than 20 years, to allow the spacecraft to continue its journey.
The first human spacecraft one light-day away
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, and crossed the borders of the solar system in 2012. Since then, it has been moving through interstellar space at a speed of about 56,000 kilometers per hour. As it approaches its fiftieth anniversary in space, the probe will reach a distance of approximately 25.9 billion kilometers from Earth, equivalent to one light-day, around November 15, 2026.
It will be the first time in human history that a human object reaches such a distance. At that point, signals traveling at the speed of light will take exactly 24 hours to get from Earth to Voyager 1 and back, further complicating communications and testing the limits of technology.
A legacy that continues to travel
The story of Voyager 1 is a story of human curiosity and ambition. The spacecraft has a memory that is several million times smaller than that of modern smartphones, but it still managed to record some of the most significant moments in the history of space exploration.
It carries the Golden Plate, humanity’s message to potential extraterrestrial civilizations, as well as the famous photograph of Earth known as the “pale blue spot.”
NASA estimates that Voyager 1’s power source will wear out during the thirties of this century, after which communication with the spacecraft will cease forever. However, the probe itself will continue its journey, gliding towards the Oort cloud, which it should reach in about 300 years. Its passage through that region will take about 30,000 years, and in approximately 40,000 years Voyager 1 will pass at a distance of about 1.7 light years from the star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Ursa Minor, closer to that star than to our Sun.
And without any signal, Voyager 1 will continue to bear witness to the moment when humanity first sent its voice and its tracks into true interstellar space, writes Futura Science.