NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft will mark a historic milestone on Wednesday, Nov. 18, by traveling one light-day from Earth, a distance of more than 16 billion miles (25.9 billion kilometers). As the most distant human-made object, the probe is so far away that any light emitted from Earth would take 24 hours to reach it. To highlight this achievement, the agency has organized two events inviting both the public and media to participate.
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, NASA invites the world to join “Shine Bright for Voyager’s Light-Day” by creating a symbolic wave of golden light encircling the planet after sunset. The agency has developed a website that allows smartphones and tablets to flash “VGR,” Voyager’s call sign, in morse code. Participants are encouraged to capture photos or videos of their light-day signal and share them on social platforms by tagging @NASA.
Following the public event, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California will host a moderated discussion on Thursday, Nov. 19, at 12 p.m. EST (9 a.m. PST). The session will feature mission members and NASA leadership discussing the status of Voyager 1 and 2, the unique science the twin probes continue to gather in interstellar space, and the challenges of maintaining operations over such vast distances. The event will also include a preview of an upcoming NASA+ Voyager documentary, planned for release in 2027 for the mission’s 50th anniversary.
The discussion will take place in JPL’s von Kármán Auditorium, the same venue where JPL hosted Voyager briefings during the spacecraft’s grand tour of the outer planets. Key participants include Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate; Jonathan Lunine, chief scientist at JPL and professor of planetary science at Caltech; Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager; Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager; and Jamie Rankin, Voyager deputy project scientist at Princeton University.
U.S. media interested in attending the event in person must RSVP by Monday, Nov. 16, while foreign national media must RSVP no later than Thursday, Nov. 12, to be considered for onsite credentials. Those interested in participating virtually must RSVP no later than two hours before the event.
Launched in 1977, the Voyager mission was designed to explore the outer planets by taking advantage of a planetary alignment that occurs once every 176 years. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, followed by Voyager 2 in 2018. Both spacecraft continue to provide unique scientific observations of the environment beyond the heliosphere, the protective bubble created by the Sun. The mission is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, with JPL building and operating the spacecraft and the Deep Space Network enabling communication with the distant probes.
<small>Source: NASA — read the original story there.</small>
