Science Questions

New Horizons is supposed to be the fastest spacecraft yet. I'm wondering when it will surpass the Voyagers as the farthest spacecraft from Earth. Grant in Tokyo

The easy answer is never because the New Horizons spacecraft is actually going to go into orbit around Pluto so it's going to stop there and isn't going to go any further out. But the Voyager spacecraft are actually at an immense distance away now. They're actually outside our solar system and in interstellar space, so we will be really hard pressed to get something out that far again. They really are the furthest thing that we've ever sent out into space.

March 2006