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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will be the first human-made object to sit one light-day from Earth

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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will be the first human-made object to sit one light-day from Earth

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is set to become the first human-made object to travel one light-day away from Earth on November 18, 2026. The spacecraft will be approximately 16.09 billion miles (25.89 billion kilometres) from Earth, meaning radio signals will take 24 hours to travel between the probe and mission controllers.

Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 has been travelling through space for nearly 50 years. Originally sent to study Jupiter and Saturn, the spacecraft crossed into interstellar space in August 2012 and continues to send scientific data to Earth.

A light-day is the distance light travels in 24 hours, approximately 16.09 billion miles (25.9 billion kilometres). Voyager 1 is expected to reach this distance from Earth on November 18 at 5:16 am EST (3:46 pm IST).

The milestone will have a direct impact on communication with the spacecraft. A radio signal sent from Earth will take approximately 24 hours to reach Voyager 1, while its response will take another 24 hours to return.

“If you want to say 'hello' to Voyager, you send your message and then you go home and you wait two days before you finally get a response,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said.

The milestone comes weeks after NASA briefly lost contact with Voyager 1. The agency's Deep Space Network failed to detect signals from the spacecraft during two scheduled communication attempts on October 18 and 19.

Communication was restored on October 20 without engineers having to send troubleshooting commands.


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