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The document discusses the Voyager missions, highlighting NASA mission controller Steve Howard's role in sending instructions to Voyager 1, which has been traveling through space for over 40 years. Originally intended to last four years, the mission has led to significant discoveries about the solar system, including the volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon, Io. The document also touches on the emotional connection of the mission team to the spacecraft and the 'golden record' carried by the Voyagers, which serves as a time capsule of humanity.

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10 views

insert8

The document discusses the Voyager missions, highlighting NASA mission controller Steve Howard's role in sending instructions to Voyager 1, which has been traveling through space for over 40 years. Originally intended to last four years, the mission has led to significant discoveries about the solar system, including the volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon, Io. The document also touches on the emotional connection of the mission team to the spacecraft and the 'golden record' carried by the Voyagers, which serves as a time capsule of humanity.

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rokhia.toure
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© © All Rights Reserved
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40 years and counting: the team behind Voyager’s space odyssey

On a chilly March morning, Steve Howard, aged 65, is at work in his office in Altadena,
California. Two computer screens are squeezed on to his corner desk along with family photos,
a box of paper tissues, and tins of peppermints. The office is in a quiet business park. Next to it
is a diner, where people linger for hours over a $1 coffee. If the few people walking by on West 5
Woodbury Road were to peer into Howard’s office, they might guess, seeing the graph-covered
twin screens and a third PC at the other end of the desk, that he was, perhaps, a financial
adviser. But what Steve Howard is actually doing makes this very ordinary scene quite
extraordinary.

Howard is a NASA1 mission controller. He is sending instructions to a probe in interstellar 10


space, billions of kilometres from Earth. The 815-kilogram craft, Voyager 1, is one of two
identical machines that for many years now have been the furthest human-made objects from
Earth.

It is no hyperbole to say, then, that the man tapping away at his keyboard is a key figure in the
greatest-ever feat of human exploration. There was nothing like the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 15
missions to the outer planets before they launched in 1977. The machines have been travelling
at around 60 000 kilometres per hour for over 40 years. The Voyagers’ on-board computers are
early 1970s models that were advanced then but are puny now – a smartphone’s computer is
some 200 000 times faster and has about 250 000 times more memory than Voyager’s
hardware. 20

The Voyager mission, originally meant to last four years, took the craft initially to Jupiter, then
Saturn, then, since everything was working well, to Uranus and finally Neptune, after which they
spun off into their journey around the Milky Way. ‘We all knew we were on a mission of
discovery,’ says Professor Ed Stone, aged 79. ‘We just had no idea how much discovery there
would be. We just kept finding things we didn’t know were there to be found. For example, 25
before Voyager, the only known volcanoes in the solar system were here on Earth. Then we
flew by Jupiter’s moon, Io, which had 10 times the volcanic activity of Earth. Ten times! We
detected hot lakes of lava on the surface. That was the first major discovery and it set the tone
for the rest of the mission.’

Against all expectations their vintage electronics are still, mostly, working in the intense minus 30
253 °C cold of outer space, but the on-board camera on each Voyager was deactivated to save
power in 1990. This was after Voyager 1 took a now-iconic ‘family portrait’ of the solar system
from almost 6.5 billion kilometres out. It captured Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus,
Earth (described by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan as a ‘pale blue dot’) and the Sun, by then just
a tiny point of light. 35

Engineers are not given to emotion, but the romance of this incredible voyage of discovery has,
by their own account, kept the ageing mission team together. Even latecomers, who were at
school when Voyager was launched, have been working on the same mission for 30 years and
more.

It is clear talking to Voyager staff that they genuinely love their spacecraft, even though most 40
were too young to see them before they flew. But as engineers, they have mixed feelings about
the most famous aspect of that romance, the ‘golden record’ that each craft carries. This is a
gold-covered copper disk containing, in groove form, 115 photos from Earth, a selection of
natural sounds from surf to whales, music from a variety of cultures and eras and spoken
greetings in 55 languages. 45

Carl Sagan, who had the initial idea for the record, wrote in the 1970s: ‘The spacecraft will be
encountered and the recording played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilisations in

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interstellar space.’ Sagan’s son Nick, then an infant, now a science-fiction novelist and
screenwriter, recorded the English message: ‘Hello from the children of planet Earth.’ But one
sure to bring people to tears is the message in Mandarin: ‘Hope everyone’s well. We are 50
thinking about you all. Please come here to visit when you have time.’

Project manager Suzy Dodd’s view of the record is more typical of the team. ‘I’m of the opinion
that space is very empty and the chances of something finding it are remote. But that doesn’t
diminish the fact that we’ve got a little time capsule out there travelling through space and now
orbiting around in our galaxy. And that’s us.’ 55

For the most part, Voyager is the reality of space exploration – slow, patient science, humdrum
perhaps, but real. It’s only a 20-minute drive from Altadena to Hollywood, where brilliant fake
versions of space exploration are confected, but Voyager, starring real people who keep tissues
and tins of peppermints on their desks, is surely one of the most amazing things in human
history. 60

Glossary:
1
NASA: the US organisation that is responsible for space exploration

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