Nasa's Voyager 1 nears one light-day distance from Earth
The spacecraft is expected to reach the 26 billion km mark on Wednesday, making communication with Earth a 48-hour process.
Nasa's Voyager 1 is approaching a milestone by travelling one light-day away from Earth, according to reports from The Times of India, The Economic Times and Telegraph India. The spacecraft is expected to reach the 26 billion km mark on Wednesday at 5:16 am ET.
At this distance, a signal travelling at the speed of light will take an entire day to reach the probe. A response from the spacecraft would take another 24 hours, meaning a single exchange could take approximately 48 hours.
The spacecraft is currently travelling at approximately 61,000 km/h through interstellar space. It was launched on September 5, 1977, from Cape Canaveral in Florida to study the outer planets of the solar system.
Astrophysicist Alan Cummings, a senior research scientist at Caltech's Space Radiation Laboratory, described the event as an engineering milestone. He noted the achievement reflects the longevity of Voyager 1 and the ability to communicate with it at such a distance.
Voyager 1 previously reached Jupiter in March 1979 and Saturn in November 1980. It crossed the heliopause, the boundary of the Sun's influence, to enter interstellar space on August 25, 2012.
While Voyager 1 nears this milestone, its twin Voyager 2 is expected to be one light-day away from Earth in November 2035, according to Cummings.