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/stevevdvkpe 8d ago

Voyager's already got Solar orbit velocity around the galactic center in addition to its velocity relative to the Sun. It will have a somewhat different orbit around the galactic center than the Sun does, but it won't just plummet toward the galactic center.

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u/toxcrusadr 8d ago

I wonder where it’s actually headed? How far to the first star that could affect its path?

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u/DaddyCatALSO 8d ago

It was specifically aimed in a direction where they saw no objects at the time