Plate Nº 11 · recorded November 15, 2026
Space & AstronomyReported finding
Voyager 1 Nears One Light-Day From Earth, a First for Any Human Object
NASA's Voyager 1 becomes the first human-made object to reach one light-day from Earth — over 16 billion miles, with radio signals taking 24 hours to arrive at light speed.
By Marcus Bennett3 min read669 words
In brief
- Voyager 1 reaches one light-day — over 16 billion miles (26 billion km) — on Wednesday, a first for any human-made object.
- Its radio signals take exactly 24 hours to reach Earth at the speed of light.
- Launched 49 years ago in 1977, the probe entered interstellar space in 2012 and travels at 38,000 mph.
- Voyager 2, launched two weeks earlier, will not reach one light-day until 2035.
- Controllers briefly lost contact with Voyager 1 in October and are still investigating the cause.
By Marcus Bennett
On Wednesday, NASA's Voyager 1 becomes the first human-made object to reach one light-day from Earth: more than 16 billion miles, or 26 billion kilometers. At that distance, the spacecraft's radio signals take exactly 24 hours, traveling at the speed of light, to arrive home.
The spacecraft launched 49 years ago. NASA expects another 18,000 years before Voyager 1 covers a full light-year, and more than double that before it approaches another star.
Project manager Suzanne Dodd sees the probe as Earth's ambassador between the stars. "It's a national treasure," she told The Associated Press. "Really extraordinary." She said the mission gives people back home a "sense of wonder."
What happens at the milestone?
NASA is inviting the public to mark the moment. After sunset on Tuesday, people everywhere can pick up a phone or a flashlight and wave golden light in Morse code, spelling V-G-R — Voyager's call sign — into the night sky.
For the mission team, the milestone changes little operationally. Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 still beam back science and engineering data almost daily while traveling at 38,000 mph (61,000 kph) toward different points in space.
Voyager 2, launched two weeks before its sibling in 1977, will not reach the one-light-day mark until 2035.
What are the spacecraft still measuring?
Despite sporadic problems typical of old age, both probes study a never-before-explored environment. They report:
- the strength and direction of the magnetic field
- surrounding pressure
- dust
- galactic cosmic rays — high-energy particles from beyond the solar system
Dodd, who has worked with the Voyagers since 1984, compared them to weather satellites. A skeleton flight control team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, sends commands roughly once a week. When problems arise, the operation ramps up, sometimes with help from a couple of retirees who once worked on the project.
The past months illustrate that rhythm. In September, controllers completed the latest power-conserving effort on the plutonium-powered spacecraft. In October, they briefly lost contact with it and are still investigating why communication was disrupted.
How did Voyager 1 get this far?
The probe swept past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, then exited the solar system and entered what NASA defines as interstellar space — the region between star systems — in 2012. Voyager 2 visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, returning stunning photos, before entering interstellar space in 2018.
Dodd credits that expertise with keeping Voyager 1 running like "the little engine that could," while the mission racks up Guinness World Records. Beyond traveling farther than any other human-made object, Voyager 1 snapped the most distant photograph of Earth in 1990: the "Pale Blue Dot," taken from beyond Neptune.
"On that blue dot, that's where everyone you know and everyone you ever heard of and every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. It's a very small stage in a great cosmic arena," Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan, part of the imaging team, said when he introduced the picture in 1990.
What does the Golden Record carry?
Each Voyager carries a 12-inch (30-centimeter) gold-plated phonograph record, a project Sagan led. The disc holds greetings in 55 languages, images and diagrams. Sagan included the voice of his son Nick, then 6: "Hello from the children on planet Earth." He added a stylus and instructions for any future finder.
"It's a time capsule of life on Earth from 1977," Dodd said. "I hope something, someone, finds it maybe 1,000 years from now."
The Planetary Society's Bill Nye, whose organization Sagan co-founded in 1980, noted that while most people alive today were born after the launches, "all of us—everyone on Earth—have been touched by these missions."
Sagan died in 1996. His message still frames the mission: one spacecraft, 16 billion miles out, carrying a portrait of everyone who ever lived.
via phys.org/rss-feed/ (Source)
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News editor covering regulation, policy and their impact on general science news at SciBeat.
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