- #1
mumbletypeg
- 1
- 1
- TL;DR
- How far will Voyager 1 deviate from straight-line motion over 100–1000 years due to interstellar gas/dust? Order-of-magnitude only. Has this been calculated?
I’m looking for order-of-magnitude bounds on how much Voyager 1’s trajectory would depart from a constant-velocity inertial extrapolation over long time scales (100, 500, 1000 years).
Two separate quantities:
I’m not looking for precise ephemerides - just whether the drift is on the order of meters, kilometers, 10³ km, etc., after ~10³ years.
Has this already been calculated in the literature, or is a back-of-envelope estimate the right approach here?
Two separate quantities:
- Cross-track deviation
Lateral displacement relative to a straight-line extrapolation. - Along-track lag
Distance difference due to cumulative slowing.
- Mass ≈ 730 kg
- Effective cross-section ≈ 10.75 m² (3.7 m antenna dish)
- Speed ≈ 17 km/s
- Neutral hydrogen density ≈ 0.1 cm⁻³
- Dust-to-gas mass ratio ≈ 1%
I’m not looking for precise ephemerides - just whether the drift is on the order of meters, kilometers, 10³ km, etc., after ~10³ years.
Has this already been calculated in the literature, or is a back-of-envelope estimate the right approach here?
