Voyager Mission 40th Anniversary

Humanity’s farthest and longest-lived spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, marked 40 years of operation and exploration in August/September 2017. In this panel presentation, hear behind-the-scenes accounts from original and current mission team members as they describe the engineering challenges and momentous science achievements of the mission. This program was recorded at JPL on August 24, 2017.

[AayushSaxena]

This is one of the best achievements of it truly is. Huge respect for everyone involved with this mission.

[gamestv]

I wish I could be able to see what voyager is seeing right now. The great big void.
This gives me goosebumps.

[alperman]

1977 was one of the best years of my life...I was a kid just straight out of high school. The NY Yankees won the World Series that year, Three's Company premiered on television, the Son Of Sam, David Berkowitz had just been captured and of course, Voyagers' 1 and 2 blasted off to its billion light year journey of no return.

[BJamesThompson]

Only 37k views?! You'd think our planet would be collectively more interested in such ambitious exploration. It's quite inspiring. Happy to be alive today. Thank you for sharing!

[stclairstclair]

How lucky to be smart enough to be on the team that worked on this, must be pretty proud.

[twisterwiper]

I have become completely addicted to these programs about historic planetary missions. It started with the JPL Cassini documentary a few weeks ago. Now I can’t stop! So interesting.

The request to document also applies in more earthly software engineering. Especially the notion of documenting the discussion and rationale. Countless times I have scratched my head over some old piece of code, wishing the original authors had documented the reason for their design choices and chosen constants definitions, that somehow have just the correct value for the universe to function 😉

[jzhao]

As a public, i watched the whole video with excitement and tears. The grand tour is truly an inspiration for me to know how far we can go. There is no boundary for imagination. How amazing that a four year project turned out to be a 40-year project and today the voyager II just entered the interstellar space. Salute to all the scientists and engineers and the maths ph that made this grand tour possible!!

[funguyutube]

Wow ... this has been up for what .. a year ... and only 491 views ! Well, I must say .. it did take me a year to stumble upon it. It is so astounding to realize what they put together back in 1972 ! Our message to the Universe !

[paulcarpenter]

Keeping my fingers crossed that these stupendous vehicles reach 50 years.

[ronwenger]

I'm still in awe of the Voyagers. I love watching these. It's 46 years now, and VGR1 is having issues. JPL is working hard to keep it going but we all know there will be an end date, and that the Golden Record will be the primary mission of both Voyagers.

[LarS]

Oh, give me back that time where people actually thought this was more interesting than realityshows and conspiracy-nuts.

[Derrick]

Long live the Voyager craft! Thank you for the video 📸

[filternow]

The voyager mission is absolutely amazing in every way. The accomplishments made with the technology available at the time shocks me every time I think of it. I mean, with the advancements made with technology here on earth - it's not like you can go up there and upgrade the hardware, yet it's older than I am and still in contact. As an electronics engineer I admire the attitude of the voyager team to make it work beyond Saturn - just because they can - a job above and beyond perfect. Just the fact that it's the longest telecommunications link to reach to interstellar space DSN-to-Voyager and back - is amazing. I'm staying tuned for anything that may happen in the next 5 years before the RTGs run out

[ilokivi]

The graduate student referred to by Ed Stone at 4:13 as having discovered the 175-year alignment of the four outer planets is Prof. Gary Flandro.

[pjb]

with 40 years of advancement in technology, are any new voyagers planned?

[MrPerrey]

Grate project and amazing people talking about. Nice nice nice!!!

[Space-Audio]

17:22 I'm probably one of the few people left that know that the images were actually returned once every 48 (not 42) seconds. (Our waveform data uses the same telemetry framing.)

[scottietoohotti]

Wow what an amazing documentary. Thank you for sharing this it was amazing

[tintintintin]

it was my year to graduate high school, 1977...I almost feel like I am one with the spacecraft...hitching a ride...keep on trucking...how far is forever? sail on

[minlunp]

You are all a legend, will be remembered forever 👍