I’m not sure that’s how inertia works in space. No matter what, unless there are forces acting on it outside of the solar system, voyager will always be moving at whatever its sum of speed changes are relative to how fast and in what direction earth was moving when it launched.
Dropping something outside of a major gravity well like earth or the solar system doesn’t make it magically adjust to the much larger context, it just stops being drawn so much to that well.
This is because smaller contexts like earth’s pull exist inside unfathomably larger contexts like galactic pull. That context was already accounted for by default at launch and doesn’t change when the spacecraft leaves the influence of earth or the sun.
That being said, a lightyear is an incredible distance that the voyager has only traveled a fraction of, hence why we can still communicate with it.
I’m not sure that’s how inertia works in space. No matter what, unless there are forces acting on it outside of the solar system, voyager will always be moving at whatever its sum of speed changes are relative to how fast and in what direction earth was moving when it launched.
Dropping something outside of a major gravity well like earth or the solar system doesn’t make it magically adjust to the much larger context, it just stops being drawn so much to that well.
This is because smaller contexts like earth’s pull exist inside unfathomably larger contexts like galactic pull. That context was already accounted for by default at launch and doesn’t change when the spacecraft leaves the influence of earth or the sun.
That being said, a lightyear is an incredible distance that the voyager has only traveled a fraction of, hence why we can still communicate with it.
Thanks!