Space is big. Really big. You’ve probably heard that before, but it doesn't actually click until you realize that Voyager 1 is currently screaming away from us at over 38,000 miles per hour, and yet, it still looks like it's standing still against the backdrop of the stars. It’s been out there since 1977. Think about that for a second. Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Star Wars had just hit theaters, and these two metallic spiders were launched into the dark. Now, everyone wants to know the same thing: how far are Voyager 1 and 2 from earth right now?
The numbers are honestly hard to wrap your head around. As of today, Voyager 1 is roughly 15.3 billion miles (24.6 billion kilometers) away from our front door. Its sibling, Voyager 2, is trailing a bit behind at about 12.8 billion miles (20.6 billion kilometers).
But what does "15 billion miles" even mean? It’s a distance so vast that light itself—the fastest thing in the universe—takes over 22.5 hours just to travel from the spacecraft back to the big dishes here on Earth. If you sent a text message to Voyager 1, you wouldn't get a "read" receipt for nearly two days. It is the definition of isolated.
The Invisible Boundary: Crossing the Heliopause
When we talk about how far these probes have gone, we aren't just talking about mileage. We’re talking about territories. For decades, the Voyagers lived inside the "bubble" of our sun—the heliosphere. This is a region dominated by the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles blowing off the sun.
In 2012, Voyager 1 did something no man-made object had ever done. It crossed the heliopause. Basically, it left the sun's magnetic influence and entered interstellar space. Voyager 2, taking a slightly different and slower path, did the same in 2018. They are now officially ambassadors in the "space between the stars."
It’s cold out there.
The environment is thick with cosmic rays that would be lethal to us, but the Voyagers just keep chugging along. Or, well, "chugging" might be a strong word. They are more like ghosts at this point, running on decaying plutonium-238. Every year, their power supply drops by about 4 watts. Because of that, NASA engineers have had to get creative. They’ve been turning off heaters and non-essential instruments for years just to keep the basic transmitters alive. It’s a slow-motion goodbye.
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Why Voyager 1 and 2 are in Different Places
You might wonder why they aren't together. If they launched in the same year, why is there a 2.5-billion-mile gap between them?
It comes down to the itinerary. Voyager 1 was the "overachiever" on a fast track. It swung by Jupiter and Saturn, using their massive gravity like a slingshot to hurl itself out of the plane of the solar system. By the time it finished with Saturn’s moon Titan, it was angled "upward" and away.
Voyager 2 took the "scenic route."
It is the only spacecraft to ever visit Uranus and Neptune. To hit all four giant planets, it had to move slower and follow a different trajectory. NASA calls this the "Grand Tour." It was a once-in-every-175-years alignment of the planets that allowed a single probe to bounce from one to the next. Because Voyager 2 had to dip "down" to visit Neptune, it’s now heading in a completely different direction than its brother. They are moving away from the sun, and away from each other, forever.
The Math of the Void
If you want to track the distance yourself, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) actually has a live odometer on their website. It’s pretty sobering to watch the miles tick up.
- Voyager 1 Speed: ~38,000 mph relative to the Sun.
- Voyager 2 Speed: ~34,390 mph relative to the Sun.
To put that in perspective, if you could drive a car at 60 mph toward Voyager 1, it would take you about 29,000 years to get there. Even at the speed of a commercial jet, you’re looking at a multi-millennia trip. This is why we don't send people out there. We just don't have the engine tech to make the trip meaningful for a human lifespan. Not yet, anyway.
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Can We Still Talk to Them?
This is the part that blows my mind. The transmitters on these probes use about as much power as a lightbulb in your refrigerator. By the time that signal reaches Earth, it is billions of times weaker than the battery in your watch.
We use the Deep Space Network (DSN)—a collection of massive radio antennas in California, Spain, and Australia—to listen. Because Voyager 2 is so far south in relation to Earth's orbital plane, only one antenna in the entire world can talk to it: the DSS 43 dish in Canberra, Australia.
Sometimes, things go wrong.
In late 2023 and early 2024, Voyager 1 started "stuttering." Instead of sending back science data, it was sending back a repetitive pattern of ones and zeros that made no sense. It looked like the end. The flight team at JPL spent months poking at 46-year-old code, trying to figure out what happened. They eventually realized a single chip in the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) had fried.
They couldn't go out there and fix it. Obviously. So, they did the digital equivalent of open-heart surgery. They moved the corrupted code to a different part of the memory, updated the pointers, and waited 45 hours to see if it worked. It did. That’s the kind of legendary engineering keeping these things alive.
What Happens Next?
Eventually, the silence will be permanent. Scientists estimate that by somewhere around 2025 or 2026, the Voyagers will no longer have enough power to run even a single science instrument. At that point, they’ll become silent hulks of aluminum and gold.
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But they won't stop moving.
In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years of a star called AC +79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. Voyager 2 is headed toward the star Ross 248. They will likely outlast the Earth itself. If the sun eventually expands and consumes the inner planets billions of years from now, the Voyagers will still be out there, orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy like little time capsules.
They carry the Golden Records, too. Those 12-inch copper discs plated in gold, containing sounds of surf, thunder, birds, and greetings in 55 languages. It’s kind of beautiful and haunting. Even when we are gone, our mixtape is still playing in the vacuum.
Tracking the Voyagers: Actionable Insights for Space Fans
If you're fascinated by the current location of these probes, you don't have to rely on old textbooks. The data changes every second.
- Check the Live Odometer: Visit NASA’s "Eyes on the Solar System" web tool. It provides real-time distance updates for both Voyager 1 and 2, including their current velocity and which instruments are still turned on.
- Follow the DSN Now Website: This is a cool, lesser-known tool. It shows you in real-time which of the massive Earth-based antennas are currently communicating with which spacecraft. If you see "VGR1" or "VGR2" pop up on a dish in Madrid or Canberra, you’re watching a live data link across 15 billion miles.
- Understand the "Light Time" Delay: Remember that when you see a "current" distance, you are seeing where the probe was nearly a day ago. Because of the speed of light, our "now" and Voyager's "now" are vastly different.
- Support Amateur Radio/Astronomy Communities: Groups like the Planetary Society often provide deep-dive technical updates on the Voyagers' health that are much more detailed than general news blurbs.
The mission was originally supposed to last five years. We are now in year 48. Whether you're looking at the math or the sheer human persistence behind the mission, the distance of Voyager 1 and 2 is a testament to how far we can reach when we actually try.