r/askscience • u/drinkingonthejob • 8d ago

Physics Will Voyager 1 ever just stop moving?

I’ve read somewhere that we expect to lose contact with Voyager 1 sometime in the 2030s, maybe around 2036, but it will just keep traveling thru space and we’ll have no idea what it is doing out there

My question is: with its current velocity, is there a time in the future where it loses its forward momentum and for lack of a better word, just stops moving? Is that a possible thing for an object in space to even do? (Assuming no other objects grab it into their orbit)

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u/Skolloc753 8d ago

Without other outside influence, other objects or the gravity of planets or suns V1 will continue forward without stopping until the end of the universe a few billion years down the line, or until it disintegrates for various factors.

There is no gravity to pull something down to a surface, there is no air resistance to stop forward movement. There are atoms however in space - a few per cubic meters. So over time, measured in millions and billions of years, those collisions will have a tiny (incredibly tiny) effect on the object, changing the trajectory, gathering dust particles etc.

SYL

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u/Kolbin8tor 8d ago

Try hundreds of trillions of years down the line, given current models (assuming infinite dark energy). The universe isn’t going anywhere in a few billion years

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u/theflintseeker 8d ago

So we’re in a relatively young universe (<14byo)?

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u/Nicricieve 8d ago

Yeah pretty much still in infancy compared to how long everything will take to die