INTERSTELLAR AGE

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The fantastic journey beyond our solar system began in 1977 before the first episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos aired. This was the mission that was planned as a grand tour going beyond the moon, beyond Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and at the time, who knew, maybe beyond the furthest planet and into interstellar space. That it actually happened is what makes it humanity's greatest space mission. Jim Bell reveals what drove and continues to drive the members of this extraordinary, inspiring team such as Ed Stone, Voyager's chief scientist and the one-time head of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab; Charlie Kohlhase, an orbital dynamics engineer who helped to design many of the critical flyby maneuvers that the spacecraft would use to get amazing images of each planet's atmosphere, moons, and rings yet still slingshot on to their next destination; Ed Danielson, a crafty planetary scientist and engineer who had worked on a number of previous NASA robotic missions and who helped build and operate Voyager's cameras; Linda Spilker and Candy Hansen, grad students studying the outer solar system who design Voyager science observations that would form the basis of their Ph.D. thesis research; Larry Soderblom, an expert geologist whose Earth-bound experience proved to be little help when trying to interpret the strange new landscapes that were revealed in the Voyager images. In all, the Voyager team represented a talented, motivated, hardworking, and eclectic group of engineers, managers, astronomers, geologists, and planetary scientists. Bell's role in the program back in the 80s as an undergraduate student was often modest. As he says I would hang out looking for people who might need someone to run out and grab some sandwiches or meet the pizza delivery guy at the front gate. In fact my main contribution to the flyby of Uranus may have been to keep some of the key team members from dying of starvation. He also worked on finding the edge of planets, pixel by pixel, sifting the data for the never before seen realities of space. The very term, planetary scientist, was a new one among academic professions, and it's one the Voyagers were critical in establishing. They made Bell the scientist he is today. Speeding through space at a mind-bending 38,000 miles per hour, Voyager 1 is now beyond our planets, soon to be joined in interstellar space by its sister ship. Its plutonium reactor will continue to have the power to send back spectrometer data into the 2020s. It will pass by its first star in about 40,000 years. When it does, its eight track tape recorder will no longer be functioning.

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