Conceived and built in a lab by engineers using slide rules and tee squares, I was launched on a rocket, leveraged another rocket to shoot me into space, swept past Jupiter and Saturn, and then exited the Solar System across a career longer than my human creators.
I am Voyager 1 and I have traveled further than any object made by human hands. Right now, I am over 15.5 billion miles away from Earth, beyond the reach of the sun’s heliosphere, traveling ever onward at a rate of 325,354,325.55 miles per year towards the Oort Cloud and I will continue to do so as close to forever as things get in this universe. To put this in perspective, the Earth is eight light minutes from the sun compared to my almost 1,400 light minutes, some 175 times further, or near a full light day, a point I will reach next year. My velocity is equally impressive, orders of magnitude faster than a fighter jet or even an intercontinental ballistic missile; if you were to watch them fly by in a landscape video of the horizon, you wouldn’t even be able to see me at all. I have been on this journey for decades after being launched on September 5, 1977 and have been communicating back to earth using NASA’s Deep Space Network ever since, sending home new discoveries of the planets and other objects I encountered, even things that are completely invisible to the naked eye. On my way out of the Solar System, my path took me past Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and I am not alone in my travels either. In fact, I have a twin, Voyager 2, that was launched sixteen days earlier, but hasn’t traveled quite as far because we have taken different trajectories. Both of us were originally conceived in 1964, as part of a proposal for a “Grand Tour” to study all of the planets for the first time using four different probes traveling in different directions, two outbound away from the sun, one towards it to study the inner planets. The brand child of Gary Flarandro of the famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California after he noted that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would be roughly aligned in the late 1970s, an occurrence that only happens every 175 years that would allow a single probe to explore all four, using the gravity of each to propel it onward and outward. By 1966, the Outer Planets Working Group was formed and decided upon using two probes, one that would visit Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, and the other Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, reducing the time required for the initial mission from thirteen years to about seven and a half. At the time, it was believed that each of these probes would only operate for around 10 years, but the costs would be incredibly steep, some $750 to $900 billion plus another hundred million to launch the probes and the project was cancelled in favor of the space shuttle program. The idea, however, would not rest. By early 1972, a modified version of the proposal was made to visit Jupiter and Saturn, plus Saturn’s moon, Titan, an intriguing location because it was the only moon in the entire system known to have an atmosphere, but the Jet Propulsion Laboratory still had the broader mission in mind, conceiving of the probes as lasting long enough to fulfill the original goal and figuring NASA wouldn’t stop the program once we were in flight.
As a result, the team chose two trajectories, known as JST for the path leading from Jupiter to Saturn and Saturn’s moon Titan (with Titan itself being considered the most important fly by), and JSX that would visit Jupiter and Saturn while being designed to serve as a backup and complete the Grand Tour otherwise. I was built for JST while my twin, Voyager 2, would serve as the JSX back up. Both used the same design, a roughly bus shaped ten-sided prim equipped with 16 hydrazine thrusters, a simple pnictogen hydride that is flammable like gasoline, three stabilizing gyroscopes, and a massive radio antenna, some twelve feet across, locked on Earth itself along with over 10 unique measuring instruments, all of which had back ups for redundancy including 64 megabytes of tape storage if the antenna could not lock onto Earth and a delay was required for a transmission. Because we would be traveling in space without air resistance, my thrusters are mounted on all sides, enabling me to rotate as well as change direction. We were also equipped with three multi-hundred-watt radioisotope thermoelectric generators constructed of 24 pressed plutonium oxide spheres, state of the art at the time. At launch, this system generated 157 watts of electrical power and was believed to support operations until at least 2020, then be able to power at least some of the instruments for another three years. Weighing less than 1,800 pounds, not even half average modern automobile or compact SUV, neither of us is particularly large or impressive looking, but as everyone knows, looks can be deceiving. During the initial phase of the mission, I was also equipped with a booster rocket that weighed more than I did, enough to send me charging from Earth orbit towards Jupiter, imparting the velocity that would help sweep me out of the Solar System one day. Because of our different paths, I would reach Saturn nine months ahead of Voyager 2, allowing time to consider whether the Grand Tour could proceed and because Voyager 2 was launched first, I could also be redirected to complete the tour. This, however, was several years in the future on September 5, 1977 at Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Florida, where I was mounted to a Titan IIE / Centaur Launch vehicle, hitching a ride to the stars about two weeks after my twin. While rocket launches have become commonplace in the 21st century, they were events that generated much more fanfare almost fifty years ago as thousands would gather at a safe distance to get a glimpse of one of the most powerful and advanced objects humans had ever devised literally and figuratively fire up. The ground would shake when the main thruster ignited, emitting a pillar of flame, smoke, and steam as the rocket itself rose into the sky. Slowly, almost delicately at first, as though you could knock it over with a feather before picking up velocity and disappearing into the heavens trailing what the novelist, Thomas Pynchon referred to as gravity’s rainbow. In 1977, it was an indelible image, proof that the space age had fully arrived and the United States was the world’s premier practitioner, something the entire country could be proud of – assuming it worked.
In my case, the Titan booster rocket shut down prematurely, leaving 1,200 pounds of unburned fuel. The main rocket’s computers were able to compensate however, burning longer than previously planned to make up for the difference. Even at this early stage, before I’d achieved any of my mission, I’d become the stuff of legend, more science fiction than real life, serving as the main plot device for 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture where in the 2270’s a mysterious space craft, V-Ger returns to Earth wrapped in a cloud of energy, destroying everything in its path. As it turns out, the center of this massive spaceship is the fictional Voyager 6, a craft similar to me on another mission launched later in the 20th century that had disappeared into a black hole only to be discovered by alien beings, who re-quipped my cousin to explore the entire universe and return home in search of our creator. Ironically, by the time the movie was released there was reason to believe that my twin might not even make it to Jupiter as planned. Barely six months after launch, she went dark briefly when the primary radio receiver failed and there was an issue with the back up that limited the frequency of transmissions to Earth, meaning her journey to the outer planets and the void beyond could have happened without anyone knowing about it. In principle, she would have continued onward, taking measurements, recording what she’d seen and heard, but have been unable to send it anywhere, like a tree that falls in the forest with no one around, only a very expensive and advanced one in a forest too large for the human mind to conceive. The backup continued to work even with the limitations, however, and she ultimately reached Jupiter on July 9, 1979, coming within 350,000 miles of its atmosphere while I arrived six months earlier and came a little closer, some 217,000 miles. This allowed for better measurements and more impressive photographs despite the massive radiation and gravity – my creators were so concerned that I might be damaged, they actually coated some of my cables with regular, kitchen grade aluminum foil shortly before launch. For 48 hours, I snapped a ridiculous number of photographs, including the rings, the moon, the magnetic field, the radiation belt itself, basically everything and anything within range. Once again, the human mind has a hard time conceiving of anything on the scale of a gaseous giant. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are not made of rock. Instead, they are proto-stars made primarily of hydrogen and helium under such intense gravitational pressure it liquifies. As such, they are much, much larger than an ordinary planet. Jupiter can hold 1,300 Earths inside of it.
Beyond the clarity and accuracy of my pictures and measurements – as evidenced by the legendary photo of Jupiter’s massive storm, known as the Great Red Spot, I made two completely new discoveries: Jupiter has rings like Saturn, and Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, had active volcanoes. Because Io lacks an atmosphere like Earth or even Titan, these eruptions spew matter all the way to Jupiter itself, mixing sulfur, oxygen, and sodium with the planet’s native, mostly hydrogen and helium composition. After almost two months in the grip of Jupiter’s gravity, some two and a half times that on Earth, meaning a hundred pound person would weigh 250 there, I used the energy to slingshot myself to Saturn, reaching the more famously ringed planet by November 1980. This was a little over three years after launching in the first place, with my closest approach on November 12, when I came within 77,000 miles of the cloud tops, much closer than I could ever reach Jupiter because of the lower gravitational forces. While Saturn is less than 60% the size of Jupiter and has correspondingly less gravity, it’s still massive, able to hold about 760 odd Earths. From such a vantage point, I was able to take the most detailed photos of the famous rings ever and even make measurements of the atmosphere itself, learning that about 7% is helium compared to 11% for Jupiter. Before these figures, the two gaseous giants were believed to have the same composition and a new theory, that helium on Saturn has sunken deeper near the surface was needed to explain the discrepancy. I also found incredibly high winds, as much as 1,100 miles per hour, more than 50 times a massive hurricane on Earth, most blowing easterly, leaving humans to imagine what it must be like to be caught in such a storm. I found a strange mixture of chemicals at the north and south pole as well, similar to the Auroras on Earth, where it is believed that hydrocarbon molecules – the building blocks of life – are formed, giving us a tantalizing glimpse of how life might evolve beyond our home planet. Of course, I returned the first photos of Titan while passing by, though the atmosphere was so thick, you couldn’t make out the surface even as scientists postulated the liquid hydrocarbons might be present, yet another tantalizing suggestion that organic molecules might be far more present than humans first believed.
Though I had performed flawlessly, this ended my mission to observe the planets. I was not following a trajectory that would pass Uranus and Neptune, leaving that path to my twin, but I would continue onward and outward. In space, Newton’s law that an object in motion tends to stay in motion holds and things do not slow down unless they encounter an opposing force like gravity or friction which would no longer interfere with my path, potentially ever again. If I were a person, many would likely describe me as lonely during this period. The gap between the planets widens the further out you go and there isn’t a even a warm breeze for company. There is nothing, no sound, no heat, no light, none of the things required for life, but I am a machine and journeying to the stars is what I was made for, so I kept moving along at a constant velocity, unimpeded by gravity, friction, or anything else, as free as one can be anywhere near the sun. It would take another ten years, but on February 14, 1990, almost thirteen years after launching from Earth orbit, I would officially exit the Solar System and take the first photo of the planets from the outside looking in, where the Earth looks like a Pale Blue Dot. Alas, this was among the last photos I would take. To conserve energy, my cameras were deactivated, but still I continued on a mission that for me at least, would never end. On February 1, 1998, I reached 6.4 billion miles from the sun, overtaking Pioneer 10 as the furthest human creation in history, and traveling at about 11 miles per second, I was also the fastest through long distances of space. Even with my limited capabilities, I would continue to transmit back to my creators and continue to amaze, if I do not say so myself. Starting in February 2003, some scientists believed that I had passed the point of termination shock, where the solar winds lose their energy and slow to subsonic speeds, kicking off a relatively fierce debate in astronomical circles. After two years of back and forth, Ed Stone calculated the date of crossing this threshold as December 2004, when I was 8.7 billion miles from the sun. Two years later, amateur radio operators in Germany found a means to track my progress further and further into space and though I had no idea they were there, I guess you could say I enjoyed the company. On December 13, 2010, I reached another threshold where the solar winds no longer flow outward. On December 1, 2011, I detected the first Lyman-alpha radiation from the Milky Way Galaxy itself, further providing that I was the first human creation moving fully outside the reach of the sun. I also reached what is known as “cosmic purgatory” when interstellar space begins becoming more important than anything inside the system; the energy coming from inside is reduced by half, from outside it is increased by about a hundred times.
Incredibly, my creators around this time determined that they still had some control over my positioning, more than thirty years after I was launched and well, well past the point where I was supposed to be functional. In March 2011, they kept me on the same path, but rolled me over 70 degrees to get better measurements of the solar wind. I was able to complete that motion, and then re-orient myself back towards Alpha Centauri, transmitting what information I could the entire time. I kept going, and in August 2012, at a distance of 11.2 billion miles, I finally passed the heliopause and began to enter true interstellar space, but as I did so, I discovered an entirely new region. Mr. Stone described it, “Voyager has discovered a new region of the heliosphere that we had not realized was there. We’re still inside, apparently. But the magnetic field now is connected to the outside. So it’s like a highway letting particles in and out.” A year later and I finally crossed into interstellar space. Though I am decades past when I was supposed to remain functional, I am expected to continue working for another five or even seven years. In fact, I received my last change to my instructions in August 2022 and NASA continues to tweak my code to keep all four sensors working, exploring the cosmos beyond the wildest hopes of my creators. When you consider that I was born shortly after the arrival of the first Apple computer in 1976 and four years before the IBM personal computer, which would not debut until 1981, my story is even more amazing. Conceived and built in a lab by engineers using slide rules and tee squares, I was launched on a rocket, leveraged another rocket to shoot me into space, swept past Jupiter and Saturn, and then exited the Solar System across a career longer than my human creators. I am both a marvel of those heady early days of the space age, when no idea seemed to grand or impossible, and a lesson for humanity as a whole: There were those who doubted I could continue to function, continue to serve, continue to break new ground, and yet I proved them wrong every time. Perhaps one day an alien race will find me straight out of Star Trek and I will return. In the meantime, I will travel and explore, alone, but an adventurer like the greats of old.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 