NASA's Voyager 1 will reach an unprecedented milestone in the history of space exploration on November 18: it will be one light-day away from Earth. At that moment, humanity’s farthest operational spacecraft will be approximately 26 billion kilometers from Earth, meaning that a beam of light or a radio signal will take a full 24 hours to travel the distance between the spacecraft and Earth.
Launched in September 1977 with the initial goal of studying Jupiter and Saturn over a period of about five years, the probe has exceeded even NASA engineers’ most optimistic predictions by nearly half a century.
Key Figures of the Interstellar Journey
- Distance: ~25,902 million kilometers (equivalent to circling Earth 650,000 times or making 34,000 round trips to the Moon).
- Travel speed: About 61,000 km/h (17 kilometers per second).
- Current location: In the constellation Ophiuchus, traveling through interstellar space.
A time capsule for the cosmos
On board Voyager 1 is the famous Golden Record, coordinated at the time by astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan. This gold-plated copper record contains:
- Sounds of Earth: Recordings of wind, waves, storms, and wildlife.
- Music of humanity: Pieces by Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky, along with classics such as Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode and recordings by Louis Armstrong.
- Greetings and history: Welcome messages in 55 languages (including ancient languages such as Akkadian), along with images and a letter from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter addressed to potential extraterrestrial intelligences.
The decline of its instruments
The spacecraft is beginning to show the inevitable effects of the passage of time and a lack of power. Following the gradual shutdown of several systems—including its cameras in 1990 and, more recently in April, the low-energy charged-particle instrument—the probe is now operating with the bare minimum. Currently, only instruments such as the magnetometer and the plasma wave system remain active to some extent; they will continue to transmit data until the radioisotope thermoelectric generator completely exhausts its energy.
Source: El Economista
