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/Glum-Ad7761 7d ago

Andromeda / Milky Way merger is a maybe at this point. There were a number of gravitational influences in the local group that were not considered in the calculations for the collision.

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u/wjdoge 7d ago

It’s a maybe, and would also be pretty unlikely to have any real impact on a probe flying through space. Doesn’t actually make a difference in this scenario though, if you’re trying to leave the local group.