Man-made object to reach a light-day from Earth for the first time in history
A man-made object is expected to reach a light-day away from Earth for the first time in human history.
The record-breaking event is due to take place late next year and the NASA space probe, Voyager 1, was first launched back in 1977.
While initially designed to fly by Saturn and Jupiter, the Voyager 1’s mission was extended and it has since traveled into interstellar space, which is the region beyond the solar system.
To date, it is the most distant a human-made object has traveled from Earth, with it also being the first spacecraft to go beyond the heliosphere, which is the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun.
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The probe is also carrying a golden record which contains sounds and images to represent our planet and life on Earth in case it encounters any extraterrestrial civilizations.
Voyager 1 currently takes just over 23 hours to receive signals sent from Earth and is traveling at a whopping 38,025 miles per hour.
The first human-made object to reach a light-day away from Earth
In November 2026, Voyager 1 will reach a distance far enough from Earth that it will take signals a full 24 hours to reach the probe, meaning it will be a full light-day away from its home planet.
This is a distance of 16 billion miles and will be the first human-made object in history to achieve it.
On its website, NASA said: “A total of five trillion bits of scientific data had been returned to Earth by both Voyager spacecraft at the completion of the Neptune encounter. This represents enough bits to fill more than seven thousand music CDs.
“The sensitivity of our deep-space tracking antennas located around the world is truly amazing. The antennas must capture Voyager information from a signal so weak that the power striking the antenna is only 10 exponent -16 watts (1 part in 10 quadrillion). A modern-day electronic digital watch operates at a power level 20 billion times greater than this feeble level.”
The space agency continued: “Through the ages, astronomers have argued without agreeing on where the Solar System ends. One opinion is that the boundary is where the Sun’s gravity no longer dominates – a point beyond the planets and beyond the Oort Cloud.
“This boundary is roughly about halfway to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Traveling at speeds of over 35,000 miles per hour, it will take the Voyagers nearly 40,000 years, and they will have traveled a distance of about two light-years to reach this rather indistinct boundary.”