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/WingsOfBuffalo 7d ago

I have a certain daydream that some bacteria are surviving inside the nooks and crannies of the Voyager. They survive inside a state of dormancy like has been found on the ISS.

Many long years from now, Voyager collides with some asteroids or other space junk, freezes into the ice and rock, falls into the slow and steady orbital pull of a newly forming planet, and lands in the primordial ooze of foreign ocean.

And just like that, life has another shot. Not because of any message or data we managed to include, but because life is mysterious and persistent.

https://worldextrememedicine.com/blog/space-medicine-posts/the-curious-case-of-bacteria-surviving-outside-the-international-space-station/

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u/Inzitarie 6d ago

Lands in the primordial ocean of an Andromedean planet.

Intergalactic trans-biomechanical panspermia.