Roughly 173 astronomical units, or 173 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.

Distance in astronomical units. One AU = 93 million miles. At this distance, sunlight takes about 24 hours to reach Voyager 1.

Speed relative to the Sun. Approximately 17 km/s — fast enough to travel from New York to Los Angeles in under 5 minutes.

Radio signals from Voyager 1 travel at the speed of light, yet still take about 24 hours to reach Earth. On November 18, 2026, the delay reaches a full day.

Launched September 5, 1977, Voyager 1 has been traveling for nearly five decades — far exceeding its planned 5-year mission.

The entire Voyager program — both spacecraft, launch, and decades of operations — cost approximately $250 million in 1970s dollars.

Voyager 1’s RTGs now produce about 220 watts, down from 470 at launch and falling about 4 watts a year. Its radio transmitter runs on roughly 22 of them.

When Voyager 1 photographed Earth for the last time in 1990, it was already 3.7 billion miles away.

Voyager 1 carried 11 science instruments at launch. Most have been shut down to save power; only 2 remain active.

Voyager 1 weighs 722 kilograms (1,592 lbs) — lighter than a compact car — yet contains technology that has outlasted most of the engineers who built it.

Time until nearest star. Voyager 1 will not pass near another star for approximately 40,000 years, when it approaches AC+79 3888.

The gold-plated copper disk is expected to remain intact for over a billion years in the cold vacuum of interstellar space.