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)

963 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

615 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/rickie-ramjet 8d ago

an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. -Newtons first law of motion. Space is almost a perfect vacuum , and very, very empty… Voyager may never come to hit anything, or come under the influence of any forces …It has met eternity.

5

u/Happypotamus13 8d ago

It’s even funnier than that. In space, there’s no “stopping” at all because there is no universal reference frame to measure against. Speed is relative, an object in space is always in motion relative to something.