Voyager 1 is one of the most impressive machines humanity has ever built. In almost 50 years of travelling through space, it has flown past Saturn, crossed into interstellar space, and become the farthest human-made object from Earth. Now, according to NASA, it’s less than a year away from reaching another major milestone. On November 15, 2026, Voyager 1 will be officially one light-day away from Earth.
Astronomers often use light-years to describe distances in space because the universe is so huge. Nothing moves faster than light, which travels at about 186,000 miles per second. In one year, that adds up to about 5.88 trillion miles. For comparison, the closest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away. Even if you could travel at the speed of light, it would still take more than four years to get there.
Voyager 1 doesn’t move anywhere near that fast, but it’s still incredibly speedy. The spacecraft has been travelling at about 11 miles per second for decades. Every year, it adds another 3.5 astronomical units (the distance between Earth and the Sun) to its journey. Because it’s so far away, sending signals back and forth between NASA and the spacecraft takes longer and longer. Last year, engineers needed weeks to fix a problem because each message took more than 23 hours to travel between Earth and Voyager 1.
In less than a year, Voyager 1 will be 16.1 billion miles away—about the distance light travels in 24 hours. NASA expects to still be in contact with the probe when it reaches this point. But its time is limited. Even if no new problems appear, Voyager 1’s power sources will run out sometime in the 2030s, ending its long mission.
