Voyager 1 Is the Farthest Human-Made Object in the Universe—and the Spacecraft Is About to Reach One Light-Day From Earth

The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, have been hurtling through space for almost 50 years, stretching humanity’s reach into interstellar space. The upcoming milestone is a testament to scientific endeavor and ingenuity

Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent

November 10, 2026 9:00 a.m.

In 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the aim of studying planets in the outer solar system. Almost half a century later, the twin spacecraft have long since achieved their original mission yet are still hurtling into the unknown. In fact, Voyager 1’s status as the farthest human-made object ever will soon be exemplified by an exceptional milestone: the probe is about to reach one light-day from Earth.

The spacecraft will achieve this astronomical record on November 18 at 5:16:07 a.m. Eastern time, at which point it will be 16.094 billion miles from our planet. That’s the distance light travels in 24 hours. (For context, it takes just over eight minutes, on average, for the sun’s light to reach Earth.)

“I just never imagined [the mission] would last that long,” Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), tells Science News’ Lisa Grossman. Spilker first joined the Voyager team just before the spacecraft launched, per the outlet, and is now the Voyager project scientist.

Did you know? Pale blue dot

Voyager 1 took the famous image of Earth called Pale Blue Dot in 1990. The photo inspired astronomer Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, in which he wrote, “Look at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”

Nothing special will happen to the spacecraft when it crosses the one-light-day boundary—the milestone is purely symbolic. And yet this symbolic event marks an extraordinary feat of science, technology and space exploration made possible by the Voyager team’s continuous problem-solving. The geriatric space probes are on their last legs, and mission scientists on Earth have had to find creative ways to preserve energy, including shutting down non-essential instruments.

When the twin spacecraft launched nearly 50 years ago, they each had ten functioning instruments. Today, Voyager 1 has only two remaining: the magnetometer, which measures magnetic fields, and the plasma wave subsystem, which detects oscillations of charged particles. In April, the team turned off the spacecraft’s low-energy charged particles experiment, which measured the solar system and galaxy’s electrons, ions and cosmic rays. And in September, scientists turned off three Voyager 1 devices and swapped them with three alternatives that use less energy, according to a statement. The risky maneuver, nicknamed the “big bang,” had been previously completed on Voyager 2.

The Voyager spacecraft are each powered by a “nuclear power plant on board” that utilizes decaying plutonium, Garry Hunt, an astrophysicist who was part of the original Voyager imaging team, tells Richard Speed on the Register’s “Kettle” podcast.

But the plutonium supply is dwindling. “We’re losing several watts per year. There will come a time when the signal [from the probes] is literally so weak we can’t pick it up,” Hunt says, which might happen around 2035.

Scientists on Earth communicate with the Voyagers via radio signals transmitted and received by NASA’s Deep Space Network, an international array of huge antennas. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so when Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth, it will take 24 hours for a message from scientists to reach the spacecraft and then another 24 hours for us to receive the probe’s answer.

“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 JPL, says in the statement.

Dodd and her colleagues must deal with more than just energy- and distance-related issues, however. Like any old tech, sometimes the probe glitches without any explanation. Last month, for example, Voyager 1 suddenly went silent. On October 18 and 19, the Deep Space Network failed to receive two expected radio signals in a row. A following signal inexplicably came through on October 20, and there haven’t been any interruptions since, but NASA still doesn’t know what caused the communication issue, according to the statement.

Nonetheless, such lucky breaks as well as scientists’ perseverance have enabled both spacecraft to become interstellar travelers. Voyager 1 officially left the sun’s protective bubble in August 2012, and Voyager 2 crossed that historic boundary in November 2018. Each spacecraft carries a golden record, a phonograph record storing sounds and images from Earth in case it ever ends up in the hands of advanced extraterrestrial life.

“I was fortunate to be at the launch of Voyager 2,” science reporter Bob McDonald wrote for CBC Radio last year, highlighting how at the beginning of his reporting on the mission he was using a typewriter. “It is hard to fathom the distances in space and how long it takes to go anywhere, but it’s been a profound experience to actually feel how slow we are by watching myself grow old as we take our first baby steps among the stars.”

To celebrate Voyager 1’s upcoming milestone, NASA is inviting space enthusiasts to participate in its “Shine Bright for Voyager’s Light-Day” event by shining the Morse code signal for V-G-R into the sky after sunset on November 17. You can use the agency’s automated flasher on your phone or follow their instructions for how to deliver the Morse code with a flashlight.

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