What is the maximum distance man-made spacecraft have traveled from Earth? When will spacecraft be able to reach another star?
The most distant man-made spacecraft from Earth is the , which, given its position in December 2021, is about 23 billion kilometers from Earth.
In 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft were launched 16 days apart to visit the Solar System’s gas giants. Both spacecraft made close flybys of Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 made close flybys of Uranus and Neptune in addition to these two planets. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made spacecraft to leave the Solar System. Today, both spacecraft continue their journey into interstellar space.
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 projects were launched because the planets would be gathered on the same side of the Sun every 176 years in the solar system. This alignment of the planets made it much easier to move from one planet to another and allowed for imaging planets such as Neptune, which had not previously been observed.
In 1979, the Voyager spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit and began acquiring images of the gas giant. Voyager 1 completed its visit to Jupiter in April 1979, while Voyager 2 continued its orbital observations from April to August of the same year. Voyagers took more than 30,000 photographs of Jupiter and its five major moons.
After Jupiter, the Voyager spacecraft began its journey to Saturn, where no spacecraft had ever been. In 1980 and 1981, the spacecraft reached Saturn, separating them. While Voyager 1 continued its journey to leave the solar system, Voyager 2 reached Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
According to current calculations, in about 40,000 years, the Voyager 1 spacecraft will pass within 1.6 light years of the star Gliese 445. Meanwhile, the Voyager 2 spacecraft will be 1.7 light years from the star Ross 248.