Where is Voyager 1 now?
- Distance from the Sun
- 171.5 au 25.7 billion km, on 22 August 2026
- Distance from Earth
- 171.3 au 25.6 billion km, on 22 August 2026
- Radio signal, one way
- 23.7 hours at the speed of light
Where it is
On 22 August 2026 Voyager 1 was about 171.5 astronomical units from the Sun, which is 25.7 billion kilometres, and about 171.3 au from Earth. A radio signal from it takes roughly 23.7 hours to arrive, so a command sent now is answered the day after tomorrow. Those figures move every day, which is why this page links to the model rather than asking you to trust a number written down once.
Why the two distances differ
The distance from the Sun and the distance from Earth are not the same question. Earth moves a full orbit each year while Voyager 1 keeps going, so the Earth figure swings up and down around the Sun figure. For Voyager 1 that swing is about 1.6 au a year rather than the full 2, because the spacecraft is 35 degrees above the plane Earth orbits in, so Earth's orbit projects onto its direction at an angle.
How the position is worked out
The model carries a sampled trajectory from NASA JPL's Horizons system, running from launch in September 1977 to December 2049, and interpolates between the samples for whatever date is on the clock. It is not live telemetry and it does not need to be: checked against a fresh Horizons query on 22 August 2026, the interpolated distance came out within 0.003 au of JPL's own answer at 171 au, a difference of two thousandths of one per cent.
What it is doing out there
Voyager 1 launched on 5 September 1977, flew past Jupiter and Saturn, and crossed into interstellar space in August 2012. It is the most distant object people have made, and it is still operating, with two instruments returning data.