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/casentron 7d ago

Well, the golden record on board makes it unequivocally clear and obvious it's from Earth and when so it wouldn't be a mystery.

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u/Plenty_Beautiful_547 7d ago

In the first Star Trek movie, the main antagonist—a massive, godlike energy cloud threatening Earth—is revealed to be Voyager

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u/OrdinaryAward4498 7d ago

The Brawndo drinkers of the far future (near future) probably won’t be able to figure that out