Voyager 1 nears historic one light-day from Earth
NASA's Voyager 1 is approaching an extraordinary milestone, highlighting the immense scale of space nearly 50 years after its departure from Earth.
By November 2026, the spacecraft will become the first ever to reach a distance of one light-day from our planet—a staggering 16 billion miles away, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
At this distance, any command sent to Voyager 1 will take a full 24 hours to reach the probe at the speed of light, with another 24 hours required for a response.
“If I send a command and say, ‘good morning, Voyager 1,’ at 8 a.m. on a Monday, I will receive Voyager 1’s response on Wednesday morning at around 8 a.m.,” said Suzy Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To maintain communication with Earth, the probes transmit data at only 160 bits per second, roughly equivalent to the speeds of dial-up internet.
“The distance from Earth means signals take much longer to arrive, and their strength diminishes along the way,” Ms. Dodd explained. “It takes multiple antenna arrays to collect that signal.”
This slow data rate means the team receives only limited information about how each spacecraft is doing, and quick fixes simply aren't possible.
However, both Voyagers were built to look after themselves.
"If they get something going wrong, they can put themselves in a safe state so that they can wait until we're able to talk to the spacecraft and figure out what the problem is and resolve that issue," Ms Dodd said.
The team has been making difficult choices for years to keep these spacecraft going as long as possible, switching off engineering systems and instruments to save precious power.
The mission began in the late 70s, when Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune happened to line up in a way that occurs only once every 175 years or so.
Such alignment made it possible for a spacecraft to visit every planet, gaining "slingshot" momentum from gravitational pulls - the result made for spectacular and groundbreaking results.
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