NASA on Friday said Voyager 1 will reach one light-day from the Sun on Nov. 18, 2026, a distance of 16.1 billion miles. The agency said the milestone comes 49 years after the spacecraft launched in 1977.
NASA said a light-minute is a measure of distance, not time. The agency said both Voyager spacecraft continue to return science from beyond the heliopause, the boundary where the Sun’s solar wind meets the interstellar medium.
The Voyager mission took advantage of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets to conduct a Grand Tour, according to NASA. The twin probes used multiple gravity assists to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, providing close views of the gas and ice giants and several moons. NASA said the two spacecraft split paths at Saturn, with Voyager 1 taking a final portrait of the solar system that included Earth.
Each Voyager also carries a Golden Record with spoken greetings in 55 languages, 27 musical tracks, 116 images, and other Earth sounds, NASA said. The agency said the records and covers used copper, gold plating, and aluminum, and the cover was electroplated with ultra‑pure uranium‑238, which has a half-life of 4.468 billion years.
NASA said it communicates with and tracks both spacecraft using the Deep Space Network. At the time of the article, the Canberra antenna tracked Voyager 1 at 25.80 billion kilometers, or just over 16 billion miles, the agency said. NASA said Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in August 2012 and Voyager 2 did so in November 2018. The heliosphere is a protective bubble created by the Sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto, according to NASA.
NASA directs readers to a video that demonstrates distances in the inner and outer solar system using light-based measurements. The agency also provides links to track each spacecraft and to educational activities about gravity assists and light-minute measurements.