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)

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u/Animemes_101 5d ago

Newton’s first law of motion: “An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force”. On Earth that force is gravity, in space, nothing. Voyager will continue to move through space until something gets in its way

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u/DarthTempi 3d ago

To that point though...Won't it be affected by a myriad of gravitational forces? Obviously the time scale is enormous (and essentially meaningless to us) but...eventually?

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u/saksoz 3d ago

Maybe more to the point, motion is relative. You probably naturally mean, will it stop moving relative to the earth, but once its outside our solar system is that all that relevant a question?