NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is about to reach a huge milestone, travelling one light-day away from Earth for the first time.
A light-day is the distance light can travel in 24 hours – about 25.9 billion kilometres, or 16.1 billion miles. Voyager 1 is expected to reach this point around 13 November 2026.
The spacecraft launched way back in September 1977, nearly 50 years ago, and has been zooming through space ever since at a speed of about 61,000km/h. It is now more than five and a half times further away from Earth than the planet Neptune.
Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, taking incredible photos of both planets before its cameras were switched off in 1990 to save power.
In 2012, it crossed the heliopause, the edge of the bubble created by our Sun, becoming one of the first human-made objects to leave our Solar System’s neighbourhood and enter interstellar space.
The spacecraft still runs on power created by radioactive decay, and scientists expect it to keep sending signals back to Earth until around 2036.
Even after that, Voyager 1 will keep travelling silently through space for tens of thousands of years to come.
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