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Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth

NASA has computed the moment at which Voyager 1 will be exactly one light-day from Earth: 2:16:07 a.m. Pacific time on 18 November 2026, at 16,094,799,096 miles, or 25,902,068,356 kilometres, or 173.14 astronomical units. No human-made object has ever been that far away. This is an ephemeris calculation rather than a plan or a prediction — nothing about the spacecraft changes at that instant — but it is the first time the light-day has been a meaningful unit for anything we have built. Some accounts date the crossing 17 or 18 November depending on the time zone used.

Planned — a programme target or declared plan, from a source that declared it. Never a prediction.

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Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on Voyager 1

  1. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
  2. Voyager 1 launches
  3. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
  4. Active volcanism found on Io
  5. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
  6. Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
  7. Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
  8. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
  9. The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
  10. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
  11. Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
  12. Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth

Related

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