Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise...

Probably, most of you can recall these opening lines from the Star Trek sci-fi franchise. But in this post I want to write about real space voyagers which are Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 that where launched in 1977.

Not long ago friends visited us at home and while having a lovely conversation we talked about space exploration. Eventually, we mentioned the Voyager 1 and 2 robotic spacecrafts. When our friends left I was curious to check what YouTube had with regard to interesting documentaries about Voyagers space mission. As you might guess, there were a lot on the YouTube, but one particular documentary called The Farthest produced by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios I liked the most. This documentary has a reasonable coverage of Voyagers mission from its inception until present and it features interviews with key scientists who were responsible for making Voyagers a successful endeavor.

As usually happens to me, while watching this documentary I’ve noticed that one of the people who was interviewed for this documentary was Jim Bell, a professor of Astronomy who wrote a book called The Interstellar Age : Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission which was the basis for the documentary. Again, as usual, I bought that same book and, boy, wasn’t I disappointed. The book was also very interesting and it covered robotic space program including early Mariner missions, but mostly focused on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 journeys beginning in 1977 and until these days when they plow interstellar space continuing ad infinitum and, some may say, beyond. The books mentions interesting discoveries that where made by each Voyager in their encounters with giant planets following on a Grand Tour of Planets. It also covers what will be the fait of the Voyagers when we as a civilization will be long gone. I particularly, liked when Jim Bell described how the Golden Record was prepared to be carried by the Voyagers and also it was interesting to know that some moons of Jupiter and Saturn could be potential harbors of life besides Earth.

All in all, I recommend you to check out the documentary and if you like it you also may consider reading the book. The next book that I have in queue is The Right Kind Of Crazy by Adam Steltzner, the chief engineer of Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, but this and more in my next post.