50 Years Later, NASA's Voyager Probe Is Reaching A Big Milestone For Space Travel

Key Points:

• On November 18, 2026, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will reach a milestone of one light-day distance from Earth, equivalent to 16.1 billion miles, marking the point where light takes a full day to travel between the two.
• Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 remains operational nearly 50 years later and is currently the most distant human-made object, traveling through deep space at 38,000 mph and about 16 billion miles from Earth.
• Voyager 1's mission initially focused on flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, providing groundbreaking data and images, including the Pale Blue Dot photo of Earth, and it became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space in 2012.
• Communication with Voyager 1 is challenging due to the vast distance, causing a 23-hour delay for signals; a 2023 communications glitch took months to resolve, but the spacecraft continues to send data using its remaining functional instruments.
• Voyager 1's "twin," Voyager 2, launched earlier and took a different path, performing flybys of Uranus and Neptune, entered interstellar space in 2018, and remains active with some instruments still operational, continuing NASA's long-term exploration of the solar system and beyond.