Voyager 1 is humanity’s most distant spacecraft.But even after a million years, it will barely have scratched the surface of the galaxy.Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has been speeding away from Earth for 48 years. It now travels through interstellar space at about 38,000 miles per hour (61,000 km/h) – fast enough to circle the Earth in 40 minutes. Yet, space is so vast that this blistering speed barely makes a dent.In one million years, Voyager 1 will cover about 330 trillion miles (530 trillion km). That sounds enormous – until you realize it’s only about 56 light-years. For comparison, the Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light-years across. After a million years, Voyager 1 won’t even have crossed one-tenth of one percent of our galaxy.It will pass its first star encounter, a faint red dwarf called Gliese 445, in about 40,000 years – and then keep drifting silently onward. By then, its instruments will have long since gone dark, but the spacecraft itself, along with its golden record carrying sounds and images of Earth, will continue its lonely journey.Did you know? 🎓

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