One ‘light day’ for Voyager 1, a half a lifetime for this science journalist

Robotic space probe Voyager 1the most distant object ever sent from Earth will reach a distance of one light day from Earth next year – a feat that has taken almost half a century to achieve.

Together with their twin Voyager 2, these intrepid explorers are now more than 23 billion kilometers from Earth. By November 2026, a radio signal traveling at the speed of light would take 24 hours to reach Voyager 1 and another 24 hours for the spacecraft's signal to return to Earth. That means mission control scientists will have to wait two days to find out if the spacecraft is still alive. Voyager 2 is on a different, slightly slower flight path and will need another ten years to reach this milestone.

Both spacecraft were launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977 on a reconnaissance mission to the outer giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune, becoming the only spacecraft to visit these worlds.

The gravitational influence of these giant worlds gave Voyagers enough speed to escape the Sun's gravity. They are is now leaving our solar system at a speed of more than 60,000 km/h, which is very fast by earthly standards, but incredibly slow on the scale of our galaxy.

I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Voyager 2 with John Lomberg, the space artist who designed the Voyager 2 cover. Golden recorda message intended for all aliens who may find the spaceship sometime in the very distant future. John and I met regularly over the years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which manages many of NASA's robotic spacecraft. This is where scientists and journalists gather to study images and data sent back from spacecraft that collided with planets.

The Voyager mission was a mission of pure discovery, like explorers like Magellan who set out to discover new worlds beyond the seas, except we literally saw new worlds beyond Earth.

The Voyager spacecraft did not stop at any of the planets, but instead flew past at enormous speeds, taking as many photographs and scientific measurements as possible along the way, like a traveler who never gets off a tour bus and takes as many pictures as possible from the windows.

The journey to Neptune at the edge of our solar system took Voyager 2 twelve years, during which time John and I saw ourselves grow old, demonstrating how long it takes to cross our solar system.

The technology we used to report on the mission also evolved from typewriters at launch to laptop computers that, by the time we reached Neptune, were more powerful than those on the spacecraft.

Since then, as the Voyagers continue their journey between the stars, John and I have both turned gray, and some scientists, such as the project scientist Ed Stonepassed away.

In other words, it takes most of a lifetime to reach one daylight in space. This puts stars far out of reach where distances are measured in light years.

If we take Voyager 1's 50-year journey to reach one day of light, multiply that by 365, and it will take 18,250 years to reach its goal. one light yearor 9.46 trillion kilometers is a standard unit of measurement in astronomy. Our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.25 light-years away, so it would take Voyager 77,562 years to reach our cosmic neighbor. Seventy-seven thousand years ago, Neanderthals were still alive.

If you wanted to travel around our Milky Way Galaxy to visit the black hole at the center, the journey would take approximately 30,000 light years, while the other side of the Milky Way is 100,000 light years away. Do the math, and this journey will take Voyager longer than Earth exists.

It was a profound experience to feel how slow we are, watching me grow old as we take our first baby steps among the stars.– Bob McDonald

Space is big, very big, and we are like children who are still crawling out of the cradle of life, unable to walk or run. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will need three days to get to the Moon, and future astronauts will have to spend at least six months in a spacecraft to get to Mars.

New propulsion systems such as plasma rockets They promise to reduce travel times to planets, but even that is still slow by interstellar standards.

Back at Voyager's launch, after the spacecraft roared off the launch pad and disappeared into the sky, we all fell silent and wondered how long this object would wander among the stars.

Both spacecraft are expected to remain intact for a billion years, perhaps more. During this time, continents will shift, the climate will change, people may become extinct.

It's hard to imagine the distances in space and how long it takes to get somewhere, but it was a profound experience to feel how slow we are, watching me grow old as we take our first baby steps among the stars.