Launched nearly 50 years ago, in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 will, on Wednesday, 18 November, have travelled one light-day from Earth, more than 16 billion miles (25.9 billion kilometres). Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object, and light from Earth would take 24 hours to reach the spacecraft. NASA will mark the milestone with two events.

On Tuesday, 17 November, NASA is inviting the world to take part in “Shine Bright for Voyager’s Light-Day” by creating a symbolic wave of golden light encircling the planet after sunset. NASA has created a website that lets smartphones and tablets flash “VGR”, Voyager’s call sign, in Morse code; people are encouraged to capture photos or videos of their light-day signal and share them on social platforms, tagging @NASA. More information is available at go.nasa.gov/shinebright.

On Thursday, 19 November at 12 pm EST (9 am PST), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California will host a moderated discussion with mission members and NASA leadership on the status of Voyager 1 and 2, the unique science the twin probes continue to gather in interstellar space, and the challenges of keeping the spacecraft operating over such vast distances, followed by a question-and-answer session with media and other audience members. A preview of the upcoming NASA+ Voyager documentary, planned for release in 2027 for the mission’s 50th anniversary, will also be shown. The event will take place in JPL’s von Kármán Auditorium, where JPL hosted Voyager briefings during the spacecraft’s grand tour of the outer planets.

Participants are expected to include Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington; Jonathan Lunine, chief scientist at NASA JPL and professor of planetary science at Caltech; Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA JPL; Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at NASA JPL; Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA JPL; and Jamie Rankin, Voyager deputy project scientist at Princeton University.

The event can be watched online at nasa.gov/live. US media interested in attending in person must RSVP by Monday, 16 November, to Josh Smooha at josh.smooha@jpl.nasa.gov; media interested in participating virtually must RSVP no later than two hours before the event.

For almost half a century, the Voyager mission has blazed a trail through space. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were designed to explore the outer planets by taking advantage of a planetary alignment that occurs once every 176 years. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2, following a different trajectory, entered in 2018; both spacecraft continue to provide unique scientific observations of the environment beyond the heliosphere, the protective bubble created by the Sun. The Voyager spacecraft were built and are operated by NASA JPL, managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California; NASA’s Deep Space Network, also managed by JPL, enables communication with the distant probes, and the mission is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington.