Mark your calendars for one week from today, November 18th, when Voyager 1 will be exactly one light-day away from Earth. After 50 years of traveling through and then out of the solar system, the little spacecraft will be about 16 billion miles away – a distance that takes light one full day to reach.
In celebration of this event, on November 17th NASA will have a Shine Bright for Voyager’s Light‑Day. All you have to do that day is shine a light into the sky so that the beam will reach the same point in space as the Voyager 1 spacecraft the following day. Of course, your light beam may be going in a completely opposite direction, but you get the point.
You can even blink VGR in Morse code. If that sounds like fun, NASA has instructions on the site to help you.
If you need more information on the travel time and distance of either Voyager 1 or 2, this NASA site will help you.
And if you want to stand in your backyard again to celebrate Voyager 1’s light-year, you will have to wait at least 17,000 years. Good luck with that.
