Prepare to be amazed! In a monumental first for humankind, a man-made object is on the cusp of reaching an extraordinary milestone: a full light-day away from Earth. This groundbreaking event is slated to occur on November 13, 2026. This is a testament to our ambition and ingenuity in space exploration. But what does this really mean? Let's dive in!
Space is vast, and the speeds we humans and our creations travel at are, comparatively, quite slow. The fastest any human has ever moved was aboard Apollo 10 in 1969, clocking in at approximately 39,937.7 kilometers per hour (24,816.1 miles per hour). Even at this incredible velocity, it would take a staggering 155 days to travel just one astronomical unit (AU), the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
But here's where it gets interesting: Light, on the other hand, is incredibly fast. Signals from Earth take only about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach an object one AU away.
Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is the spacecraft poised to achieve this remarkable feat. Currently, it's roughly 169.5 AU from Earth, having already broken boundaries by venturing beyond our solar system's heliosphere and entering interstellar space. At its current speed of about 61,198 kilometers per hour (38,027 miles per hour), it still takes over a year to widen that light-distance to a full 24 hours.
When Voyager 1 reaches a distance of 25.9 billion kilometers (16 billion miles) from Earth, a journey spanning nearly 50 years, it will have traveled the distance that light covers in a single day. According to calculations by Dr. Alfredo Carpineti, this will happen on November 13, 2026. After this date, the probe will not fall within 24 light-hours from Earth again.
Voyager 1 is expected to continue its mission, guided by NASA, until its power runs out, likely in the early 2030s. But its journey is far from over. First, it will traverse the Oort cloud, a vast region at the edge of our solar system, and then it will encounter other stars.
The Oort cloud, first proposed by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1950, is a massive, undiscovered region that marks the gravitational boundary of our solar system. NASA explains that short-period comets may originate in the inner part of the Oort cloud, while long-period comets likely come from the outer portion.
Voyager 1 could reach the Oort cloud in a few centuries. However, the sheer scale of the cloud means it will take tens of thousands of years to pass through it.
NASA estimates that it will take Voyager 1 about 300 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it.
After exiting the Oort cloud, Voyager 1 will continue its journey through the cosmos. In approximately 40,000 years, it will have a close encounter with the star Gliese 445.
Voyager 1 will get within 1.7 light-years of Gliese 445 in about 40,000 years. Gliese 445 is an M-type main-sequence star with around a third of the mass of our Sun.
But the story doesn't end there. A study suggests that Voyager 1 will encounter TYC 3135-52-1, a main-sequence star, in around 303,000 years. At that point, it will still be about 0.965 light-years away. The team concluded that the spacecraft will continue to drift through space for a very long time.
What are your thoughts? Do you find these timescales mind-boggling? Do you think we'll ever be able to travel at speeds that would allow us to reach these destinations within a human lifetime? Share your opinions in the comments below!
