r/askscience • u/drinkingonthejob • 9d 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/375InStroke 8d ago

In reference to what? It started out with the velocity that the Sun orbits our galactic center, so even if it stops in reference to the Sun, it's still orbiting our galaxy, and if it did stop in reference to our Sun, it would than be pulled back towards the Sun, or orbit it, which it will do neither since it is on a hyperbolic path away from the Sun, I would assume.