Launched on September 5, 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been travelling away from Earth for nearly five decades. As of 2026, it sits more than 24 billion kilometres from our planet — so far that a radio signal travelling at the speed of light takes over 22 hours to make the one-way trip.
Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object ever built, and remarkably, it is still alive.
Where Is Voyager 1 Right Now?
Voyager 1 is currently travelling through interstellar space — the vast region beyond our solar system’s protective bubble, known as the heliosphere. It officially crossed into interstellar space in August 2012, becoming the first human-made object to do so.
The spacecraft is moving at roughly 61,000 kilometres per hour, heading in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. At that speed, it would still take about 40,000 years to reach the next nearest star system, Proxima Centauri — and it is not even headed in that direction.
You can track Voyager 1’s real-time position using NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System tool, which shows its exact location updated with live telemetry data.
Is Voyager 1 Still Working?
Remarkably, yes — though it has had some scares. In late 2023, NASA engineers discovered that one of Voyager 1’s flight data system computers was sending back garbled data. After months of painstaking remote diagnosis (remember: every command takes 22+ hours to reach the spacecraft), engineers managed to reroute data around the faulty chip and restore full communications in April 2024.
The spacecraft is powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) — essentially nuclear batteries that convert heat from the decay of plutonium-238 into electricity. These are slowly losing power; NASA expects Voyager 1 will have to begin shutting down science instruments one by one over the next few years as power drops below minimum thresholds.
Current estimates suggest Voyager 1 could remain in contact with Earth until approximately 2030, after which its power will be too low to operate any instruments or transmit data.
What Has Voyager 1 Discovered?
Before sailing into the void, Voyager 1 transformed our understanding of the solar system during its planetary flybys:
- Jupiter (1979): Discovered active volcanoes on Io — the first time active volcanoes had been seen on a body other than Earth. Also found a thin ring system around Jupiter.
- Saturn (1980): Provided the first detailed images of Saturn’s rings and discovered several new moons. It also made a close flyby of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, revealing a thick nitrogen atmosphere.
- Interstellar space (2012-present): Voyager 1 is measuring the density, temperature, and magnetic field of interstellar plasma — data that no spacecraft had ever collected before.
The Pale Blue Dot
On February 14, 1990, at the request of astronomer Carl Sagan, Voyager 1 turned its camera back toward the inner solar system and took a photograph of Earth from a distance of about 6 billion kilometres. Earth appeared as a tiny, barely-visible speck — what Sagan famously called the “Pale Blue Dot.”
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” — Carl Sagan
It remains one of the most profound images ever taken.
What Comes After Voyager 1?
When Voyager 1 finally goes silent, it will continue drifting through the galaxy indefinitely. It carries a Golden Record — a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images from Earth, intended as a message to any intelligent life that might one day find it.
NASA’s next dedicated interstellar mission is still in the concept phase. The proposed Interstellar Probe mission, if funded, could launch in the 2030s and reach interstellar space far more quickly than Voyager did, thanks to advances in propulsion technology.
Until then, Voyager 1 remains humanity’s furthest emissary — a 722-kilogram spacecraft built in the 1970s, still faithfully sending back data from the edge of our cosmic neighbourhood.
Key Facts: Voyager 1
- Launch date: September 5, 1977
- Current distance from Earth: ~24 billion km (22+ light-hours)
- Speed: ~61,000 km/h relative to the Sun
- Entered interstellar space: August 2012
- Expected mission end: ~2030
- Power source: Plutonium-238 RTGs
