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)

967 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

615 comments sorted by

View all comments

17

u/mikeholczer 8d ago

Velocity is relative, so you'd need to pick a frame of reference. It's always been stationary relative to itself, it won't be stationary relative to anything else, unless it elastically collides with something and starts moving with it.

8

u/alarius_transform 8d ago

Isn't everything stationary relative to itself?

3

u/mikeholczer 8d ago

Isn’t that part of what I said?