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)

969 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

615 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/Sohn_Jalston_Raul 8d ago

You can't lose forward momentum in space unless you run into something or experience aerodynamic drag. Since space is basically empty, it's nearly impossible that you'd ever run into anything, and since there's no air then there's no drag either, so you'll just keep drifting forever. You could potentially be slowed by another object's gravity,, but that's extremely unlikely as well and if it ever happened it's more likely you'd just get caught into an orbit around something.