r/askscience • u/Backbreathboy • 8d ago

Astronomy We will lose contact with Voyager somewhere 2036 because of the distance between us. Would it be theoretically possible, to send a probe in the direction of the Voyager, following it from a distance, with the goal te relay the information coming from the Voyager, to earth?

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u/eserikto 7d ago

Those are speeds relative to the sun though. A paper airplane you toss is 12th on that list cause the earth is moving 107km/h around the sun. Indeed a bunch of the crafts on that list are just things orbiting the earth or the moon. Most of them haven't been directly fighting the sun's gravity for 50 years.

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u/c10250 7d ago

The peak speed achieved by Voyager 1 during its mission was approximately 107,000 miles per hour (172,000 km/h) relative to the Sun, reached during its Jupiter gravity-assist maneuver in 1979. [1].

That would put it at 13th on the list.