Man-made most distant spacecraft will soon be one light day away

Humanity’s most distant spacecraft Voyager 1 will soon be one light-day away from Earth.

This means the Voyager 1 will be so far from home that even light—the fastest thing in the universe—will take 24 hours to travel between Voyager 1 and Earth.

Launched in 1977, the spacecraft has spent nearly five decades crossing the outer solar system.

Voyager 1 is now drifting through interstellar space, far beyond the Sun’s protective bubble.

Reaching a distance of one light-day marks the first time any human-made object has traveled so far that communication signals require a full day to make a one-way journey

Though this distance is still far from a full light-year, it represents a profound milestone in humanity’s exploration of the cosmos.

The Voyager program designed to explore the outer planets and then continue into interstellar space.

After completing its historic flybys of Jupiter and Saturn—capturing detailed images, studying the planets’ atmospheres, rings, and moons, and discovering active volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io—Voyager 1 followed a trajectory that carried it upward out of the plane of the solar system.

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, crossing the heliopause, where the solar wind gives way to the interstellar medium.

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It continues to transmit data using its aging instruments, powered by a radioisotope generator that is gradually losing energy. Voyager 1 also carries the Golden Record, a phonograph disc containing sounds, music, images, and messages intended to represent life and culture on Earth to any intelligent beings that might encounter it.

Despite its vast distance and weakening power, Voyager 1 remains a symbol of human curiosity, endurance, and our desire to explore beyond the boundaries of our own world.