The milestone Voyager 1 is closing in on is about distance, not time. And it's very, very far.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft, traveling for nearly 50 years, will soon cross a mile marker reached by no other human-made object — one light-day away from Earth. That’s the distance a particle of light can travel in 24 hours, equaling about 16 billion miles (about 26 billion kilometers), a point that Voyager 1 will reach on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026, at 5:16:07 a.m. EST.
Its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, took a different path through the solar system after they launched in 1977, in order to visit Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 is on pace to be one light-day away from Earth in nine more years, in November 2035.
