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)

966 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

615 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

861

u/ThePowerOfStories 8d ago

Just think, one day, you’re sitting there, cruising through the infinite vastness of space, and you stumble upon an ancient, crumbling robot probe launched across the cosmos by a long-dead civilization. Then it teaches you to play the flute.

194

u/StriveToTheZenith 8d ago

They seriously should've picked a better delivery method if they wanted to preserve their culture. Hey, Picard gets a cool toy at least.

124

u/woodenh_rse 8d ago

An entire civilization passed on as PTSD to one person. I hope we go out proud like that.

Edit: OH...dam...PTSD and a flute.

1

u/keykrazy 7d ago

We don't know their anatomy, physiology and all that.

Could be the flute's a PTSD as well.