Voyager 1 approaching one light-day from Earth

In exactly one month, the Voyager 1 probe will be at nearly 25.902 billion kilometers from Earth, according to tracking by the American space agency. This distance is equivalent to one light-day, the distance light travels in 24 hours in the vacuum of space.

Commands to Voyager 1 take two days to reach and return

Engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will send commands to the probe on November 18 at 11:16 Paris time. Due to the vast distance, it will take one day for the commands to reach Voyager 1 and another day for a response to return.

Voyager 1 has been traveling for 49 years

Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 has been moving away from Earth at a speed of approximately 61,000 kilometers per hour. After flying by Jupiter and Saturn, it left the heliosphere in August 2012, entering interstellar space.

Voyager 2 joined its twin in interstellar space

Voyager 2, its twin, joined Voyager 1 in interstellar space in November 2018. Light-days are a unit of distance, similar to light-years, which are approximately 9.460 billion kilometers. Light takes 1.3 seconds to travel from Earth to the Moon, 8 minutes from the Sun, and over 4 hours to reach Neptune.

Voyager 1 is heading toward Gliese 445

According to an explanatory page published by NASA in August 2026, Voyager 1 is heading toward Gliese 445, a star in the Little Dipper located more than 17 light-years away. It will pass about 1.7 light-years from this star in 40,000 years.

Voyager 1’s power is decreasing each year

The probe's power comes from nuclear generators that convert the heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. Their power decreases by about 4 watts each year. After an unexpected power drop during a maneuver at the end of February, engineers from JPL turned off the LECP instrument on April 17, 2026, which had measured low-energy charged particles since the beginning.

Only two instruments remain operational on Voyager 1

On Voyager 1, only two scientific instruments are still operational, aside from everything necessary to communicate and control the probe: the magnetometer, which measures magnetic fields, and the instrument that detects plasma waves.