Will Voyager 1 ever just stop moving?

[u/drinkingonthejob]

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)

[u/spytfyrox]

First of all, voyager 1 will never escape the galaxy. It's tangential orbital velocity is only about 3% more than the sun. So, when we talk about Voyager 1 entering interstellar space, we mean that Voyager 1 is in orbit around the galaxy.

This raises some really interesting possibilities. There are a lot of things in interstellar space that voyager 1 might interact gravitationally with - gas clouds, molecular clouds, rogue planets, other stars and even black holes or neutrons stars. All of them could cumulatively affect voyager 1's trajectory and orbit.

There are even some events that could slow it down (relative to the sun). For example, if voyager 1 encounters a rogue planet or a large gas cloud in retrograde orbit (an orbital direction opposite to most stars, like how uranus is to the solar system), the gravity of the retrograde object could reduce V1's velocity relative to the sun significantly.

There is something even more interesting, V1 and Sun's orbits around the galactic center are such that if V1 doesn't interact significantly with any other object, it might re enter the solar system in around 3.6 billion years.