Nasa's Voyager 1 approaches one light-day away from Earth
- Published
Nasa's Voyager 1 has travelled further than any human made object ever and it's about to reach another milestone.
The spacecraft was launched nearly 50 years ago, and since then, has been moving away from Earth into space, and is now more than 15 billion miles away.
But in November, it will be one light-day away from Earth.
But what exactly does this mean, and where is it heading next?
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What is Voyager 1?
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Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and was originally sent to fly past Saturn and Jupiter.
It was only supposed to last five years but has survived for nearly 50 and is still functional, collecting data for scientists.
In 2012, it made history as the first human-made object to leave our solar system and cross into interstellar space.
The spacecraft is currently more than 15,900,000,000 miles away from Earth.
In fact, it's so far away, that it currently takes nearly 23 hours 45 minutes for radio signals from Earth to reach Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 has its own time capsule - a gold record on board - which contains samples of music, photographs and human speech.
It was put on the craft in case any alien life form was ever to come across the probe.
According to Nasa, Voyager 1 is headed in the direction of a star more than 17 light-years away from Earth called AC +79 3888 (also known as Gliese 445) in the constellation Ursa Minor.
However, it's not expected to reach it for nearly another 40,000 years.
What is a light-day?
On Wednesday 18 November at exactly 10:16:07am UK time, Nasa's Voyager 1 spacecraft will be 16.094 billion miles (25.902 billion kilometers) away from Earth.
This is also known as one light-day, as that is the distance that light travels in 24 hours.
Voyager 1 isn't the only spacecraft on this incredible journey.
Its twin, Voyager 2, was also launched in 1977 - 16 days before Voyager 1.
However, it took a different, slower route through our solar system, flying past the planets Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 2 is expected to reach the one light-day milestone about nine years after Voyager 1, in November 2035.
