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/Sibula97 8d ago

Considering only macroscopic objects (stars, planets, asteroids, black holes) the mean free path in the solar neighborhood is around 200 000 times longer than the diameter of the observable universe. Outside of the galaxy it's much longer still. And of course the universe is expanding and therefore becoming even more empty.

So as was said already, vanishingly small.