voyager 1 satellite location

Voyager 1 live position and data

This page shows Voyager 1 location and other relevant astronomical data in real time. The celestial coordinates, magnitude, distances and speed are updated in real time and are computed using high quality data sets provided by the JPL Horizons ephemeris service (see acknowledgements for details). The sky map shown in the background represents a rectangular portion of the sky 60x40 arcminutes wide. By comparison the diameter of the full Moon is about 30 arcmins, so the full horizontal extent of the map is approximately 2 full Moons wide. Depending on the device you are using, the map can be dragged horizondally or vertically using the mouse or touchscreen. The deep sky image in the background is provided by the Digitized Sky Survey ( acknowledgements ).

Current close conjunctions

List of bright objects (stars brighter than magnitude 9.0 and galaxies brighter than magmitude 14.0) close to Voyager 1 (less than 1.5 degrees):

Additional resources

• 15 Days Ephemerides
• Interactive Sky Map (Planetarium)
• Rise & Set Times
• Distance from Earth

Astronomy databases

• The Digitized Sky Survey, a photographic survey of the whole sky created using images from different telescopes, including the Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar Mountain
• The Hipparcos Star Catalogue, containing more than 100.000 bright stars
• The PGC 2003 Catalogue, containing information about 1 million galaxies
• The GSC 2.3 Catalogue, containing information about more than 2 billion stars and galaxies

Object Search

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Voyager 1 is back online! NASA's most distant spacecraft returns data from all 4 instruments

The spacecraft has resumed full science operations after a technical issue began creating complications in November 2023.

All right, everyone — we can all breathe a sigh of relief. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is fully operational once more, with all four science instruments returning usable data to Earth.

The problems began in November 2023, when Voyager 1 lost its ability to "speak" with us. More specifically, it started sending to Earth unintelligible data instead of its normal 0s and 1s of binary code. Of course, Voyager 1 is 46 years old — ancient for a spacecraft — so it wasn't entirely a surprise that its health might be waning. And that's not to mention that it's in entirely uncharted interstellar territory, some 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth. 

Voyager 1's dogged team was determined to not only figure out what went wrong, but also to fix the problem. And they've succeeded! Controllers identified where the issue was located: the flight data subsystem (FDS), used to "package" data to be sent to Earth. Further sleuthing revealed the exact chip causing the problem, which allowed them to find a workaround. After the team relocated the code to a new location in the FDS, Voyager 1 finally sent back intelligible data on April 20, 2024 — but only from two of its four science instruments. Now, just two months later, Voyager 1's remaining two science instruments are back up and running, communicating effectively with mission control on Earth.

Even if Voyager 1 had gone dark for good, however, the mission would still have been a wild success. After it launched in 1977, its primary mission was to study Jupiter and Saturn — that was accomplished by 1980. (Its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2 , went on to study Uranus and Neptune .) But Voyager 1 is on an unstoppable path. Continuing its journey away from Earth, the spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012, returning crucial data about this mysterious realm.

 — Voyager: 15 incredible images of our solar system (gallery) — Scientists' predictions for the long-term future of the Voyager Golden Records will blow your mind — Ed Stone, who led NASA's iconic Voyager project for 50 years, dies at 88  

Now that Voyager 1 is back online, the team will continue to "touch up" the spacecraft to get it back in top form, including resynchronizing its timekeeping software to execute commands at the right time , as well as performing maintenance on the digital tape recorder that measures plasma waves. And hopefully, Voyager 1 will have a long, happy life ahead.

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Space.com contributing writer Stefanie Waldek is a self-taught space nerd and aviation geek who is passionate about all things spaceflight and astronomy. With a background in travel and design journalism, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University, she specializes in the budding space tourism industry and Earth-based astrotourism. In her free time, you can find her watching rocket launches or looking up at the stars, wondering what is out there. Learn more about her work at www.stefaniewaldek.com .

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• richlightyear Having traveled 15 billion miles, it is now still only .0025 light years away. The universe is a pretty big place. Reply
• CrispyBokeh Oh, I didn't know. I thought it was pretty much at the edge of the universe already, and that space was tiny Reply
• billslugg Voyager 1 is at the edge of the explored universe. Space is tiny until Dad makes you shuck enough sweet corn to fill a bushel basket. Reply

billslugg said: Voyager 1 is at the edge of the explored universe. Space is tiny until Dad makes you shuck enough sweet corn to fill a bushel basket.

• yossarian22 This is the energizer bunny of space crafts. It just keeps going and going even when NASA believes they have heard the last from it. Pretty good for a vessel with the computing power that's less than the average electronic car key of today. Reply
• DanielJ Except now it wants to be referred to as 'Vger'. Reply

DanielJ said: Except now it wants to be referred to as 'Vger'.

• Questioner Voyager 1 would be an excellent place to measure the orbit diameters of Solar system planets using its distances to and trigonometry with angles from the background stars. A fine place to differentiate if any discrepancies of distance occur from mass field internal frames of reference (we measure) and its more largely mass field external frame of reference. Keep that 46 y/o puppy 'right now' relevant, with informative experiments. Come on people, let’s do some science. Reply

NapmasterG said: Oh that’s just great…and my daughter’s name is Ailea…and she wants to be astronaut…

• Questioner Do they have to speed up signal frequencies to communicate with Voyager 1 due to our time dilation so far inside to the Sun's mass field? Reply
• View All 17 Comments

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Interstellar Mission

Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012 and is the most distant human-made object in existence.

Mission Statistics

Launch Date

Sept. 5, 1977

About the mission

Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012 and is the most distant human-made object in existence. Launched just shortly after its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, in 1977, Voyager 1 explored the Jovian and Saturnian systems discovering new moons, active volcanoes and a wealth of data about the outer solar system.

Voyagers 1 and 2 were designed to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs only once in 176 years and remain the most well traveled spacecraft in history. Both spacecraft carry a sort of time capsule called the Golden Record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the story of our world to extraterrestrials.

Instruments

• Imaging system
• Infrared interferometer spectrometer
• Ultraviolet spectrometer
• Triaxial fluxgate magnetometer
• Plasma spectrometer
• Low-energy charged particles detectors
• Cosmic Ray System (CRS)
• Photopolarimeter System (PPS)
• Plasma Wave System (PWS)

Mission Highlights

Sept. 1, 2013

Interactive 3D model of Voyager 1. View the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System .

• › Mission Website
• › Fact Sheet
• › JPL History
• › Voyager 1 Information on Solar System Exploration
• › NASA Mission Page
• › Voyager 2 Information on National Space Science Data Center

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Voyager 1 is sending data back to Earth for the first time in 5 months

For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity's most distant spacecraft in the cosmos.

Voyager 1 is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years old, the probe has shown multiple quirks and signs of aging in recent years.

The latest issue experienced by Voyager 1 first cropped up in November 2023, when the flight data system's telemetry modulation unit began sending an indecipherable repeating pattern of code.

Voyager 1's flight data system collects information from the spacecraft's science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects its current health status. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeroes.

But since November, Voyager 1's flight data system had been stuck in a loop. While the probe has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth over the past few months, the signal did not carry any usable data.

The mission team received the first coherent data about the health and status of Voyager 1's engineering systems on April 20. While the team is still reviewing the information, everything they've seen so far suggests Voyager 1 is healthy and operating properly.

"Today was a great day for Voyager 1," said Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL, in a statement Saturday. "We're back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back."

The breakthrough came as the result of a clever bit of trial and error and the unraveling of a mystery that led the team to a single chip.

Troubleshooting from billions of miles away

After discovering the issue, the mission team attempted sending commands to restart the spacecraft's computer system and learn more about the underlying cause of the problem.

The team sent a command called a "poke" to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight data system to run different software sequences in the hopes of finding out what was causing the glitch.

On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the garbled data. While the signal wasn't in the format the Voyager team is used to seeing when the flight data system is functioning as expected, an engineer with NASA's Deep Space Network was able to decode it.

The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennae on Earth that help the agency communicate with the Voyager probes and other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system's memory.

By investigating the readout, the team determined the cause of the issue: 3% of the flight data system's memory is corrupted. A single chip responsible for storing part of the system's memory, including some of the computer's software code, isn't working properly. While the cause of the chip's failure is unknown, it could be worn out or may have been hit by an energetic particle from space, the team said.

The loss of the code on the chip caused Voyager 1's science and engineering data to be unusable.

Since there was no way to repair the chip, the team opted to store the affected code from the chip elsewhere in the system's memory. While they couldn't pinpoint a location large enough to hold all of the code, they were able to divide the code into sections and store it in different spots within the flight data system.

"To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole," according to an update from NASA. "Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the (flight data system) memory needed to be updated as well."

After determining the code necessary for packaging Voyager 1's engineering data, engineers sent a radio signal to the probe commanding the code to a new location in the system's memory on April 18.

Given Voyager 1's immense distance from Earth, it takes a radio signal about 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and another 22.5 hours for a response signal from the spacecraft to reach Earth.

On April 20, the team received Voyager 1's response indicating that the clever code modification had worked, and they could finally receive readable engineering data from the probe once more.

Exploring interstellar space

Within the coming weeks, the team will continue to relocate other affected parts of the system's software, including those responsible for returning the valuable science data Voyager 1 is collecting.

Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched in 1977 and are the longest-operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long life spans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.

The probes are currently venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun's bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Voyager 2, which is operating normally, has traveled more than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet.

Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn't communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a long-shot "shout" technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft's antenna in the wrong direction.

The team estimates it's a few weeks away from receiving science data from Voyager 1 and looks forward to seeing what that data contains.

"We never know for sure what's going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going," said Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd, in a statement. "We've had many anomalies, and they are getting harder. But we've been fortunate so far to recover from them. And the mission keeps going. And younger engineers are coming onto the Voyager team and contributing their knowledge to keep the mission going."

(The-CNN-Wire & 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)

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Where is Voyager 1 now? Repairs bring space probe back online as journey nears 50 years

After many months of extremely long-distance repairs, NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe is fully operational once again.

“The spacecraft has resumed gathering information about interstellar space,” the agency announced last Thursday, and has resumed its normal operations.

The spacecraft , now travelling through interstellar space more than 15 billion miles from Earth, began sending back corrupted science and engineering data last November.

Over the ensuing months, engineers worked to troubleshoot the problem, a tedious and complicated process given the vast distance between Earth and Voyager 1. Each message took 22.5 hours to transmit, meaning each communication between engineers and the spacecraft was a nearly two day long process.

By April, NASA engineers had traced to root of the problem to a single chip in Voyager 1’s Flight Data System, allowing them to begin rearranging lines of computer code so that the spacecraft could continue transmitting data. Last month, NASA announced that it had restored functionality to two of the spacecraft’s science instruments, followed by the announcement last week that Voyager 1 had been fully restored to normal operations.

Voyager 1: Still traveling 1 million miles per day

Launched in 1977 along with its sister craft Voyager 2, the twin craft are robotic space probes that are now the longest operating spacecraft in history. Their initial mission was to study the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, but they have continued their long journey in the ensuing decades, travelling farther and wider than any other man-made object in history.

In 1990, Voyager 1 transmitted the famous “ Pale Blue Dot ” photograph of Earth, taken when the spacecraft was 3.7 billion miles from the Sun.

By 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space, where they have continued transmit data on plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles in the heliosphere – the outermost region of space directly influenced by the Sun.

As part of their one-way mission, both Voyager spacecraft also carry copies of the “ Golden Records ,” gold plated copper discs containing sounds and images from Earth that were curated by the astronomer Carl Sagan.

Currently travelling roughly one million miles per day, Voyager 1 will continue it journey until at least early next year, when NASA estimates that diminishing power levels may “ prevent further operation .”

Interstellar Messengers

Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. Voyager 1 reached the interstellar boundary in 2012, while Voyager 2 (traveling slower and in a different direction than its twin) reached it in 2018.

Mission Type

Science Targets

Latest News

Voyager 1 Team Accomplishes Tricky Thruster Swap

Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments

Ed Stone, Former Director of JPL, Voyager Project Scientist, Dies

NASA’s Voyager Team Focuses on Software Patch, Thrusters

NASA Mission Update: Voyager 2 Communications Pause

The Interstellar Mission

After completing the first in-depth reconnaissance of the outer planets, the twin Voyagers are on a new mission to chart the edge of interstellar space.

The Golden Record

The contents of the golden record were selected for NASA by a committee led by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.

The Spacecraft

The twin Voyagers are escaping our solar system in different directions at more than 3 astronomical units (AU) a year.

The Pale Blue Dot

The behind-the-scenes story of the making of Voyager 1's iconic image of Earth as "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Discover More Topics From NASA

Voyager 1 Trajectory through the Solar System

• Released Thursday, August 31, 2017
• Visualizations by:
• Tom Bridgman

Visualization centered on the Voyager 1 trajectory through the solar system.

A slightly sped-up version of the Voyager 1 visualization above, reducing the time for the Voyagers to cross the asteroid belt.

• Solar System

Please give credit for this item to: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

• Tom Bridgman  (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
• Kathalina Tran  (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
• Genna Duberstein  (USRA)
• Scott Wiessinger  (USRA)

Project support

• Laurence Schuler  (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
• Ian Jones  (ADNET Systems, Inc.)

Release date

This page was originally published on Thursday, August 31, 2017. This page was last updated on Friday, August 2, 2024 at 3:59 PM EDT.

• Voyager @ 40
• Voyager Retrospective

Datasets used

Planetary ephemerides SPICE kernel

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.

Hubble’s Brand New Image of Jupiter

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