As of today, February 6, 2026, Voyager 1 is approximately 15.95 billion miles (25.6 billion km) from Earth, continuing its lonely trek through interstellar space. This distance is so vast that light—the fastest thing in the universe—takes about 23 hours and 34 minutes to travel one way between the probe and NASA’s Deep Space Network. The spacecraft is rapidly approaching a major "light-day" milestone, expected in November 2026, when it will be exactly one light-day (16.1 billion miles) away, meaning a round-trip communication will require two full days. Despite being nearly 50 years old and operating on a dwindling nuclear power source, Voyager 1 recently resumed regular science operations after engineers successfully troubleshot a radio transmitter issue and a computer glitch in the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS).
So if Voyager’s team is asking the spacecraft to do something once it reaches that point, it will take another day for Voyager to respond.
“If I send a command and say, ‘good morning, Voyager 1,’ at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, I’m going to get Voyager 1’s response back to me on Wednesday morning at approximately 8 a.m.,” Suzy Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto. After decades in space, both have had to turn off several instruments, but they are using their remaining tools to study this uncharted territory and provide data that could inform future missions.
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