It takes a beam of light a single day to travel 16.1 billion miles, a distance known as a light-day. It'll take Voyager 1, the American spacecraft moving at 10.6 miles per second, more than 49 years to do the same.
Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 and explored Jupiter, Saturn and points beyond, will reach a light-day milestone in November 2026 when it becomes the first craft to travel 16.1 billion miles from Earth.
Distances in space are so vast, astronomers use the speed of light, 186,282 miles per second, to measure them. A light-day is the 16.1 billion miles traveled by light waves and radio signals in 24 hours. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles.
By comparison, our solar system is relatively small, averaging about 3.7 billion miles from our sun to Pluto.
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