Scrub the mission year to watch Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 travel outward from the Sun, then pick an object below to read its real NASA JPL distance and dates.
Voyager 1 is about 170 AU from the Sun as of 2026-01-09, growing roughly 3.6 AU every year - it will pass one light-day from Earth around 2026-11-18. Voyager 2 trails behind at about 142.5 AU. Both have been coasting at constant speed, with no propulsion, since their last planetary flybys in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Drag to orbit and scroll or pinch to zoom. For the belt of icy bodies and the far larger Oort Cloud beyond it, see the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud 3D Explorer; for the famous 1990 photograph Voyager 1 took looking back at Earth, see the Pale Blue Dot 3D Explorer.
Voyager Interstellar Position 3D Explorer
This browser explorer places the Sun, the Kuiper Belt, the heliopause boundary, and both Voyager probes on one compressed scale, then lets you scrub the mission year to watch each spacecraft's real distance grow since its 1977 launch.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the two most distant human-made objects, and both have already left the Sun's protective bubble for interstellar space. Voyager 1 launched on 1977-09-05 and crossed the heliopause on 2012-08-25; as of 2026-01-09 it is about 170 AU from the Sun (roughly 25.43 billion km), a distance that grows about 3.6 AU every year because it has coasted at a constant ~17 km/s with no propulsion since its last planetary flyby, Saturn in 1980. At that rate NASA JPL expects it to reach one light-day from Earth - about 173.8 AU - around 2026-11-18, becoming the first human-made object to do so. A radio signal from Voyager 1 now takes about 23.5 hours to reach Earth one way. Voyager 2 launched slightly earlier, on 1977-08-20, but visited all four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) before heading outward, so it trails behind at about 142.5 AU as of early 2026 and only crossed the heliopause on 2018-11-05, six years after Voyager 1. Voyager 2 crossed the termination shock - the heliosheath's inner boundary - at 84 AU back in August 2007. The heliopause itself is the outer edge of the heliosphere, where the outward pressure of the solar wind balances the surrounding interstellar medium; it is asymmetric rather than a perfect sphere, and each Voyager crossed it at a slightly different real distance (about 121 AU for Voyager 1, about 119 AU for Voyager 2). Both spacecraft still transmit limited science data from their magnetometer and plasma-wave instruments, though NASA has powered down other instruments for decades as their plutonium-238 power sources lose about 4 watts a year; engineers expect meaningful science data to continue into the late 2020s or early 2030s.
- Scrub the mission year from 1977 to 2026 and watch both probes travel outward
- Pick an object - either probe, the heliopause, the Kuiper Belt, Earth's orbit, or the Sun - to read its real distance and dates
- Play the mission timeline to watch 49 years of travel at once
- Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom
- Runs fully in the browser with the vendored three.js engine - no account, no upload
| Object | Distance from Sun | Key date |
|---|---|---|
| Voyager 1 | about 170 AU (as of 2026-01-09) | Crossed heliopause 2012-08-25 |
| Voyager 2 | about 142.5 AU (as of early 2026) | Crossed heliopause 2018-11-05 |
| Heliopause (simplified average) | about 120 AU | Real boundary is asymmetric, 110-122 AU |
| Kuiper Belt | roughly 30-50 AU | Both probes crossed this decades before interstellar space |
For the belt of icy bodies and the far larger Oort Cloud beyond it, open the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud 3D Explorer. For the famous 1990 photograph Voyager 1 took looking back at Earth from about 6 billion km away - a single historic image, not this page's ongoing distance tracker - open the Pale Blue Dot 3D Explorer.
Everything renders on your device with WebGL. The 3D engine loads once (about 0.7 MB) and is cached.
This is an educational approximation - distances are compressed with a square-root scale so the Kuiper Belt, the heliopause, and both probes fit in one view, and the mission-year scrub is a straight-line approximation between launch and today rather than each probe's real, more complex early trajectory. The published launch dates, heliopause-crossing dates, and the two probes' real distance-as-of figures are the actual NASA JPL-sourced values; they will drift further from the numbers shown here as both spacecraft keep moving outward after this page's last review date.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far away is Voyager 1 right now?
About 170 AU from the Sun as of 2026-01-09 (roughly 25.43 billion km), a NASA JPL-published figure that grows about 3.6 AU every year.
How far away is Voyager 2 right now?
About 142.5 AU from the Sun as of early 2026 (roughly 21.32 billion km) - closer than Voyager 1 because it visited all four giant planets before heading outward.
When did each probe reach interstellar space?
Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause on 2012-08-25. Voyager 2 crossed it on 2018-11-05, about six years later.
What is the heliopause?
The outer edge of the heliosphere, where the outward pressure of the solar wind balances the surrounding interstellar medium. It is asymmetric, not a perfect sphere - this page shows it as a simplified average sphere at about 120 AU.
Why is Voyager 2 closer than Voyager 1 even though it launched around the same time?
Voyager 2 flew a longer, slower path to visit all four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), while Voyager 1 took a more direct route past Jupiter and Saturn only.
Are the probes still working?
Yes, in a limited way. Both still transmit data from their magnetometer and plasma-wave instruments. NASA has powered down other instruments for decades as their plutonium-238 power sources lose about 4 watts a year; engineers expect meaningful science data into the late 2020s or early 2030s.
What does the mission-year scrub slider show?
A straight-line approximation of each probe's distance from launch (1977) to today's published distance. It smooths over the years each probe spent flying past planets before settling into a constant-speed coast, so it is an educational approximation, not a precise historical trajectory.
How is this different from the Pale Blue Dot and Kuiper Belt pages?
The Pale Blue Dot page covers a single historic 1990 photograph. The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud page covers that region's structure. This page tracks the two spacecraft's real, still-changing distance from the Sun and the interstellar-space milestone each one already passed.