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

robotic space probe sailor 1The most distant object ever sent from Earth will arrive within a light day of 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, radio signals traveling at the speed of light will take 24 hours to reach Voyager 1 and signals from the spacecraft will take 24 hours to return to Earth. This means Mission Control scientists 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 take another decade to reach that milestone.

Both spacecraft were launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977 on reconnaissance missions to the giant outer planets Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune, making it the only spacecraft to visit those worlds.

The gravitational influence of those giant worlds gave the Voyagers enough speed to escape the Sun’s gravity. they are now leaving our solar system Speeds of over 60,000 km/h, which is fast by earthly standards, but incredibly slow on the scale of our galaxy.

I was fortunate to be present at the launch of Voyager 2 with space artist John Lomberg, who designed its cover. golden recordA message is for any aliens who may find the spacecraft some time in the not too distant future. John and I met regularly over the past few years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California, which is mission control for many of NASA’s robotic spacecraft. This is where scientists and journalists gather to examine images and data sent from spacecraft encountering planets.

The Voyager mission was one of pure discovery, similar to explorers like Magellan who set off across the ocean to discover new worlds, except that we were literally seeing new worlds beyond Earth.

The Voyager spacecraft did not stop at any planets, instead they flew by at great speed, 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 photographs as possible out the windows.

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

The technology we were using to report on the mission also evolved from typewriters at launch to portable computers more powerful than the spacecraft by the time they reached Neptune.

Since then, while the Voyagers continue their journey among the stars, John and I have both become brownies, and some scientists, like project scientists ed stoneHas passed away.

In other words, it takes the better part of a lifetime to reach just one light-day in space. This makes the stars too far away to reach where distances are measured in light years.

If we take Voyager 1’s 50-year journey to reach one light day, multiply it by 365, it will take 18,250 years to reach. one light yearor 9.46 trillion kilometers, a standard unit of measurement in astronomy. Our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.25 light years away, so it will 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 galaxy to see the black hole at the center, it is a trip of about 30,000 light years, while the other side of the galaxy is 100,000 light years away. Do the math and that trip will take Voyager longer than Earth.

Watching ourselves grow older as we take our first baby steps among the stars is a profound experience and truly realizing how slow we are.– Bob McDonald

Space is big, really big, and we are like babies still emerging from the cradle of life, not able to walk or run. It would take Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen three days to reach the Moon, and future astronauts traveling to Mars would have to spend at least six months confined to a spacecraft.

New propulsion systems such as plasma rocket There is promise of reducing travel times to planets, but they are still slow by interstellar standards.

At the launch of Voyager, as the spacecraft roared off the launch pad and disappeared into the sky, we all sat still and wondered how long that object would remain there wandering among the stars.

Both spacecraft are expected to last for a billion years, possibly longer. During that time the continents will change, the climate will change, humans may become extinct.

It’s hard to estimate distances in space and how long it takes to get anywhere, but seeing ourselves grow old as we take our first baby steps among the stars is a profound experience and realizing exactly how slow we are.