The Voyager probes are drifting toward stars we cannot reach
In short: Launched in 1977, the Voyager twins have become humanity's most distant ambassadors. This video explores their current journey into interstellar space and what happens to our cosmic time capsules once they leave our reach.
At a distance exceeding 24 billion kilometres from our Sun, Voyager 1 represents humanity's most distant craft in the cosmos. Powered by plutonium-238 generators, these probes are traveling at roughly 17 km/s—a speed that represents only about 0.0037% of the speed of light.
While they won't reach Alpha Centauri, their trajectories will bring them past the red dwarf stars Gliese 445 and Ross 248 in approximately 40,000 years. They carry a Golden Record containing greetings in 55 languages and images of Earth, serving as a metallic time capsule for any civilization capable of decoding our signals or analyzing our relics.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Will Voyager Probes Meet Alpha Centauri's Alien Worlds?
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