Category Archives: voyager

A Personal Voyage with Voyager

voyager
The Voyager missions opened up the worlds of the outer solar system to our scientific gaze. Courtesy NASA.

It has been 40 years since the Voyager missions left Earth on their way out to the realm of the gas and ice giant planets. At the time they left, I had just finished college (the first time) and beginning as a science writer. Those missions sparked my imagination. I remember sitting in someone’s living room watching the news conferences from JPL when Voyager 1 reached Jupiter. A couple of years later, I was at the press conference for the Voyager 2 at Saturn, covering it for the Denver Post. I managed to cover two more — at Uranus and Neptune. Ultimately those missions sent me back to school to study astronomy and space exploration. I was also inspired by watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series.

Voyager: Lifetimes of Exploration

In a sense, the Voyager missions have paralleled my career. For some people born about that time — and later — there’s never been a time without a Voyager spacecraft headed out of the solar system. I find that pretty darned amazing. Before they left, planetary science was the discipline of the future. Ground-based observatories provided the best views of the planets of the outer solar system. There was much to learn, and the things Voyager (and its predecessors, the Pioneer spacecraft) showed us dazzled our eyes.

I have been reading many stories about Voyager that are floating around the past week or so. It’s interesting to read new viewpoints on missions I’ve taken for granted. One story I read was faintly critical of the time it took for probes to reach their targets. I recognize the frustration; in a Star Trek universe, those probes would be halfway to the next galaxy by now. But, we live in a cosmos that is bound by some physical rules that it behooves every writer to understand.

Teaching Writers about Planets

Before scientists started sending probes to the other planets, not all writers knew about “transfer orbits” and “gravity assists” and “trajectory course corrections” and so on. Those are the tools of the trade for sending spacecraft to other worlds, particularly the latter two. When I got to JPL for the Saturn flyby, I encountered a fantastic cadre of people who already knew those terms. Many studied science and/or science journalism. With such erudite journalists, each press conference and informal briefing morphed into an informal graduate course in space science. It was not only educational but exhilarating to learn from them and from the scientists on the spacecraft teams. It left me wanting more. Which is why I went back to school. And, ultimately, I ended up writing about them in such projects as my fulldome show The Voyager Encounters (still available to planetariums, actually!).

Voyaging into the Future

Of course, times have changed. More missions have flown out to gas giants and beyond. Galileo, Cassini, Juno, and New Horizons have made their mark in outer solar system studies — from Jupiter to Pluto, and beyond. Cassini is coming to an end in a couple of weeks after another lifetime of studying the Saturnian system. For people in their early teens or so, there’s never been a time when we weren’t exploring Saturn, its rings and moons, up-close and personal. New Horizons is well over a decade “on the road”. For those born midway through the first decade of the 21st Century, there’s never been a time without a spacecraft on the way to the Kuiper Belt.

What missions will inspire future kids who are like me? Perhaps Mars missions. Nearly 100 missions have been launched or are on the drawing boards to go to the Red Planet. There’s an awfully good chance that the first Mars explorers are sitting in grade school or perhaps even high school right now, in classrooms around the world. What they learn about exploration will come from their teachers, scientists, and writers like me. I hope we continue to have missions to inspire us and them, just as my cadre had the Voyagers and their sister ships.

Me? I’m a science writer, and the future holds many tales to tell!

Voyager: Exploring the Realm of the Giants

The Voyager Mission

the Voyager spacecraft
The Voyager spacecraft twins are still working and still returning data, 40 years after their launch. Courtesy NASA/JPL-CalTech

I’ve been thinking about the Voyager mission lately. Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of these two hardy spacecraft to explore the gas giants of the solar system. They weren’t the first spacecraft to get “out there”. That honor belongs to the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft that preceded them. Those two explored Jupiter and Saturn, whetting our appetites for more.

The Voyager 2 mission is the first one I ever covered as a science writer, so it holds a very special place in my memories. I flew out to JPL in August of 1981 to watch the images and data come flowing back as the spacecraft whizzed past Saturn. I returned two more times to cover the flybys of Uranus and Neptune in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Those were seminal experiences for me and led me directly back to school to study more science.

Voyager’s Achievements

For the scientists involved, the Voyager mission is their life’s work. The data the spacecraft returned are still contributing to our knowledge of the gas giant planets. These flagship missions inspired others to follow. The Cassini spacecraft is currently ending its mission to Saturn. The Galileo mission went to Jupiter and did in-depth studies there. The New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto broke many records and is well on its way to the next target. Finally, the Juno mission that arrived at Jupiter last year is sending back even better looks at the largest planet and is winding up its last orbits this year. Planetary science has never had it so good, and I hope it gets even better!

Voyager’s Achievements

voyager targets
The planets visited by the Voyager spacecraft; Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn; Voyager 2 flew past all four gas giant planets. Courtesy NASA/JPL

Both Voyager spacecraft are still working, still sending back data from just beyond our solar system’s heliospheric boundary. Voyager 1 is the first to actually leave the heliosphere behind and is headed to deep space. Voyager 2 is not far behind. And, incredibly, they’re both still working pretty well and will continue to do so until their energy runs low within the next decade.

Along the way out toward the stars, they showed flew past four gas giants, sending back glorious images of planets, moons, rings, and massive atmospheres. They revealed dozens of new moons and provided incredibly detailed close-up looks at cratered surfaces, turbulent clouds, lightning storms, aurorae, and much more.

Personal Reflections on Voyager

I have to admit that when I first asked if I could go cover the Voyager 2/Saturn flyby for the Denver Post, I was motivated more by the chance to visit the world-famous JPL and hang with scientists than I was by the chance to learn the science. By that, I mean I already knew that there’d be cool science. But, the rare chance to meet and mingle with people such as Carl Sagan and Ed Stone and other Voyager scientists (including a few from Colorado who I knew from my undergraduate days there), was just too much to pass up. And so, off I went and spent several days absolutely immersed in planetary science. I wrote a couple of stories that I had to phone into the copy desk at the paper, and in the process, gained a nickname I still have: Spacewriter. I was also called “The Planet Lady” by the copy desk folk. All because I had the audacity to ask if I could go cover something bigger than anything I’d imagined. And, my editor, an amiable guy named Bob, told me to be good and do good. So, I did. And, I was dazzled by the science, the pictures, the sights and sounds of the flyby, and the absolute dedication of the science teams doing the work.

I’ve been back to JPL many times since then, covering various missions. I’ve also covered a few at the Kennedy Space Center and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (for New Horizons). Make no mistake about it: they’ve all been exciting. Perhaps because it was my first, Voyager 2 at Saturn will always stand out in my mind slightly above the rest — not because the others were bad, but because it opened doors for me. It taught me a lot about the planets, but also about the science teams and the science itself. I’ll always want more.

Want to see more about the Voyage achievements? Check out JPL’s story about this set of missions.