Voyager 1 to Become First Human-Made Object One Light-Day From Earth

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will become the first human-made object to travel one light-day from Earth on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026, crossing a distance of about 16 billion miles (25.9 billion kilometers), the space agency said.

The milestone is set for 5:16:07 a.m. EST, according to NASA. One light-day is the distance light travels in 24 hours — 16,094,799,096 miles (25,902,068,356 kilometers). It means that a radio command sent from Earth now takes a full day to reach the spacecraft.

Nearly 50 years of flight

Voyager 1 launched in 1977 and has been flying for nearly 50 years. It is the most distant human-made object and has been operating in interstellar space since leaving the Sun's heliosphere. Its twin, Voyager 2, took a different path through the solar system to visit Uranus and Neptune and is on pace to reach one light-day from Earth in nine more years, in November 2035, NASA said.

The agency framed the achievement as a marker of distance rather than time. For comparison, sunlight takes about eight minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth, and light crosses the roughly 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) to the Moon in about 1.3 seconds.

A global salute

NASA is marking the event with two activities. On Tuesday, Nov. 17, it is inviting people worldwide to take part in "Shine Bright for Voyager's Light-Day," creating a symbolic wave of golden light around the planet after sunset. The agency has set up a website that lets smartphones and tablets flash "VGR" — Voyager's call sign — in Morse code. Participants are encouraged to post photos or videos and tag @NASA.

On Thursday, Nov. 19, at 12 p.m. EST (9 a.m. PST), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will host a moderated discussion about the status of both Voyager probes, the science they still gather in interstellar space, and the challenges of keeping them operating across such vast distances. A media question-and-answer session will follow, and NASA plans to preview a Voyager documentary for the mission's 50th anniversary in 2027.

The panel is scheduled to include Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate; JPL chief scientist Jonathan Lunine; Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd; project scientist Linda Spilker; mission manager Kareem Badaruddin; and deputy project scientist Jamie Rankin of Princeton University. The event will be held in JPL's von Kármán Auditorium, where the agency hosted Voyager briefings during the probes' grand tour of the outer planets.