Humanity Is About to Reach One Light Day

After 49 years in space, Voyager 1, our fastest spacecraft leaving the Solar System, is about to become the first human-made object one light-day from Earth. Light covers that distance in a single day. A light-year is 365 of those. So we raced them: a beam of light against Voyager, checkpoint by checkpoint, from the Moon to the edge of the Sun's wind, out into the long empty, and on to the farthest thing you can see tonight with your own eyes. 0:00 49 years, one light-day 0:27 The fastest thing there is 1:02 The race to Voyager 1:49 The long empty 2:57 Voyager's clock 3:49 Old light 4:27 The farthest thing you can see Where all of this fits, from atoms to the edge of the universe →    • How Big Is the Universe, Really?   How old everything is, on one calendar →    • If the Universe Were One Year Old, How Lon...   Voyager 1 crosses one light-day on November 18, 2026 (NASA). Distances use mean values and Voyager's average pace (49.2 years per light-day). Sources: NASA/JPL Voyager mission pages, EarthSky, IFLScience, BBC Sky at Night, Popular Science, Hublin et al. 2017 (Nature, the age of Homo sapiens). #Voyager1 #lightyear #space