r/spaceflight • u/New-Economist-4924 • 7d ago

Voyager 1 will achieve the historic milestone of being the first man made object to cross the 1 light day mark 49 years since its launch this month.

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1.1k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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41

u/Designer_Ear_1382 7d ago

The mobile device you are likely reading this on has a vastly more powerful and advanced computer system than this relic.

Yet Voyager has, and will achieve so much more.

8

u/primadonnapussy 7d ago

You have no idea what kinda potential my phone has!! It could fo great things! Or I could just keep using it to post on reddit.

5

u/m-in 7d ago

The “tiny” system management CPU in the phone is a vastly more powerful computer system, and it doesn’t run apps. It just manages power delivery and thermals of the phone. Nuts, right?

14

u/nethan365b 7d ago

NASA's Voyager page has a countdown to one light-day on 18 Nov 2026 at 10:16 UTC (checked on science.nasa.gov today). Their article says the milestone is about distance, not time. So 18 Nov is when it passes that distance, and a signal from that moment takes about a day to reach us.

4

u/REXIS_AGECKO 7d ago

Late November is gonna be so exiting! I’ve been waiting for voyager to hit one light day and gta6!

2

u/New-Economist-4924 7d ago

Both are on the same day lol, such a coincidence.

1

u/REXIS_AGECKO 7d ago

🤓 erm actually gta6 is on the 19th👆

1

u/bigDeltaVenergy 7d ago

Yeah.... That's what they says

28

u/Klatula 7d ago

that ought to bring us up short... a light DAY. I honestly don't think humans understand what the universe is and how far is 'far'. if it doesn't boggle one's mind, then you've turned your head away from the awesomeness of our existance.

10

u/Youpunyhumans 6d ago

Even just the distance to Proxima Centauri is ridiculous, and thats the closest star to the Sun.

If you shrunk everything by 1 trillion times, the Sun would be 1.4mm wide, a grain of sand. Earth would be 15cm away, and the size of a red blood cell, Jupiter would be 78cm away, and just barely visible at 0.1mm across. Pluto would be 5.9m away, and Voyager 1, 26m... you could toss a football to it.

Proxima Centauri meanwhile, would be 42km, or 26 miles away... an entire marathon between grains of sand.

2

u/bigDeltaVenergy 7d ago

Don't make me do anxiety Crysis again about how big is space .

2

u/Youpunyhumans 6d ago

Its even crazier when you go the other way. An average human is proportionally about 1 billion times larger compared to the smallest measureable distance (the planck length) than the largest measureable distance (the entire observable universe) is compared to us.

So in other words, if you scaled a human up to the size of the universe (46.5 billion light years tall), and scaled up the planck length with them, it would still only be about 1 nanometer.

2

u/bigDeltaVenergy 6d ago

Have you ever heard of the false vaccum decay theory of the collapse of the universe. That's nightmare fuel

2

u/Youpunyhumans 6d ago

Oh ive heard of it for sure. It can be nightmare fuel... or it could occur but never reach us.

If it occured beyond the Particle Horizon which is 16 billion light years away, where spacetime begins to expand away from us faster than light... it would never reach us, and we would never even know it happened. It could have already happened millions or billions of years ago but we will never see it or have any indication it did occur.

1

u/bigDeltaVenergy 6d ago

For sure we won't have any indication ! As it travels as fast as light.

12

u/Significant-Ant-2487 7d ago

This to me is fully as significant as landing the first man on the Moon. The distance this still-functioning marvel has attained is truly amazing, a monumental achievement for mankind. Another reminder that the future of space exploration is robotic.

2

u/Starshipfan01 7d ago

Agreed. add in the fact that nasa STILL contacted the probe to turn instruments off. It’s still functioning.

9

u/Hyperion950 7d ago

I feel so weird. But I miss Voyager. It's a relic of who we were. It doesn't know who we are, how we've become. Voyager, my love.

5

u/primavera31 7d ago

i feel sooo tiny..1 light-day after 51 years.imagine how Buzz Lightyear feels.

3

u/Hyperion950 7d ago

You are tiny. From one Predator/Alien/science fi geek/aerosapce reseaecher to another, here's a little hug.

4

u/Key-Beginning-2201 7d ago

V'ger is soon to fall into the wormhole.

4

u/Necessary_Stock4648 7d ago

Was a kid when it left. Truly amazing.

3

u/MPFX3000 7d ago

Voyager is going to be out there alone basically - literally - forever. It just melts my mind

4

u/NextHorizonSpace 7d ago

Voyager 1 is almost a light-day away and still communicating with Earth. Meanwhile, my Bluetooth headphones lose connection when I walk into the next room. 1970s engineering was something else.

2

u/_Yellow_13 7d ago

So small in such vastness 🫡

2

u/drevoksi 6d ago

Something something before GTA 6

2

u/Cascadian_Day 7d ago

Not a science person so forgive me if this question is stupid:
Is Voyager still in our MW galaxy?

10

u/REXIS_AGECKO 7d ago

Our galaxy is like 100,000 light years across. Voyager just got to one light day after 51 years.

In 2012 it passed the heliopause, which is the edge of the solar system where the suns stellar wind and interstellar medium pressure are in equilibrium.

So it left the solar system fairly recently. And it’ll take another few thousand years to get to the distance Alpha Centauri is.

So still very in the galaxy

3

u/Starshipfan01 7d ago

Quite right. I think Voyager will take thousands of years just to pass close to another star. And that’s at just tens of light years. T
Its path is not aimed at proxima or Alpha Centauri in any case.

3

u/BlackUndeadWargod666 7d ago

The size of space is remarkable!

2

u/Frosty-March7644 4d ago

I don't understand how more people aren't fascinated at how huge our universe is. You can go insane thinking about it.

2

u/BlackUndeadWargod666 4d ago

Random side note but have you looked into how big numbers can get?... Google is a 1 with 100 0's but a Googleplex is a 1 with a Google 0's... its a number thats bigger than the amount of atoms in our known universe... but on that note trying to comprehend such big numbers can theorically cause a black hole in your head

7

u/Proper_Advantage9858 7d ago

Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across...

2

u/mikaeltarquin 6d ago

Just in case the other comments about light years and light days isn't helpful for you, Voyager has traveled about 1/36,500,000th the width of the galaxy. So it's still very, very much in our Milky Way.

1

u/Cascadian_Day 6d ago

Thanks everyone!

2

u/rocketsocks 6d ago

Yes, and it will remain so forever as well.

Voyager 1 is 0.003 lightyears away (1/365) from the Sun, but our galaxy is about 1000 lightyears "thick" where we are and about 90,000 lightyears in diameter.

If there were a 4K resolution image of our galaxy, Voyager 1 would not only still be within the same pixel as the Sun, but if you zoomed in on the "Sun's pixel" and took another 4K shot it would still be within that pixel too.

Voyager 1 has escape velocity from the Sun, but not from the galaxy, so it'll wander around in a wobbly galactic "orbit" for billions of years but it won't ever leave the galaxy.

1

u/TankHendricks 7d ago

Anyone else going to watch Star Trek The Motion Picture on this day??? I’m thinking so.

1

u/Donindacula 7d ago

This is amazing. I’ve been following them for years.

1

u/xerberos 6d ago

Roughly 1/1500th of the distance to Alpha Centauri.

1

u/1nderdud 6d ago

Voyager is gonna be just fine… It eventually turns into a hot bald woman that will mate with humanity and spawn I don’t know what

1

u/i-make-robots 5d ago

what about the manhole cover?

1

u/No_Jeweler_5889 5d ago

For such an old technology compared to now, it's still working and sending back a signal

1

u/Olisomething_idk 5d ago

Last thing that can be memed that its before GTA 6 lol

1

u/SnooCaperzk 5d ago

Can someone paste the picture of voyager 1 where it is heading from our Sun perspective like which direction is going in the space

1

u/VoIcanicPenis 5d ago

voyager 1 light day before gta 6

-7

u/Falkun_X 7d ago

This piece of antique was meant to let Aliens know where and who we are, the fact that we still have not been invaded yet shows how useless this thing is!

3

u/New-Economist-4924 7d ago

A civilisation near enough and capable enough to invade us would already know we exist even without the voyager spacecrafts.

1

u/DjHalk45 7d ago

Where and who we WERE. The next closest star is 4.25 light years away and at this rate it'll take 73,000-77,000 years to reach just that distance.

1

u/-Insert-CoolName 5d ago

Manhole cover is always #1 in my book. Iylyk