good afternoon and welcome to the
Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum here on the National Mall in
Washington DC
my name is matthew Shindell I am curator
of planetary science here in the museum
space history department and we're here
today in our moving beyond Earth gallery
a gallery that celebrates human
exploration into Earth orbit and beyond
the folks that we're going to hear from
today have never left the earth but
they've nonetheless explored the outer
solar system and in a sense have been
our human representatives out in space
to the outer planets and we're here
today to celebrate and commemorate with
them the 40th anniversary of the Voyager
spacecrafts it was an epic mission to
explore the outer planets a mission that
to this day I think stands out as one of
the most ambitious that NASA ever sent
out into the solar system to me the
mission has personal relevance not
because I was ever involved with it but
because as a child the encounters with
the various planted planets actually the
two final planets Uranus and Neptune
helped to define my childhood and also
helped to define my own understanding of
our place in the solar system I was too
young to enjoy the flybys of Jupiter and
of Saturn but Uranus and Neptune I
remember quite clearly as a kid seeing
the the images on the news at in the
evening news and and just really being
impressed by what we were doing out
there in the solar system that I could
feel that I was one of the first to see
these planets in such great resolution
and I'm sure that several others of you
who like myself perhaps were born in the
70s might feel the same way and also you
I want to note before going any further
that we do have a wonderful model of the
Voyager spacecraft upstairs and are
exploring the planets gallery that is
you know
through to the actual Voyager it's built
from from some of the parts that were
used in in engineering and testing the
Voyager and if you want to see that
spacecraft in its real full size and and
glory I suggest that you take some time
if you're here in our audience to go
upstairs and take a look at the model
and if you're not if you're watching us
on NASA TV please come to the museum
when you can and take a look at that
model I don't think you'll be
disappointed so to get started I'd like
to introduce dr. Thomas Zuber excuse me
sir Buchan he is the associate
administrator for the science Mission
Directorate at NASA and is headquartered
here at NASA headquarters in Washington
DC during his career
dr. Zuba ken has authored or co-authored
more than 200 articles in refereed
journals on Solar and Heliospheric all
phenomena he's been involved with
several NASA science missions including
Ulysses the messenger spacecraft to
mercury and the advanced composition
Explorer so dr. Zuber ken
well thanks everybody it's really a
pleasure to be here with you today to
celebrate this pioneering moment for
both NASA and for exploration history of
humanity happy Anniversary to Voyager
yes of course you know that on September
5th four decades ago in 1977 NASA
launched a Voyager 1 spacecraft only a
little bit a little over eight years
after the blast-off - Apollo 11 in 1969
in exploration terms Voyager was and
still is to me and to so many the Apollo
11 of space science it's a mission that
changed everything it not only changed
what we know but how we think it's about
exploration of the unknown and
redefining what we can and cannot do as
humans imagine this for children all
around the region around the country
going to school getting their
schoolbooks and looking at these
pictures in these spokes of looking at
especially the pictures of the planets
many of these pictures of cars are
pretty young mercury has pretty cool
pictures I know because I was on the
messenger mission as you just heard
taking images there you go look at Mars
images some of the most amazing
investigations going on right now both
on the surface and in orbit but here you
go farther out and all of a sudden you
get to Neptune and Uranus and frankly
every picture you see there at high
resolution comes from these spacecraft
that are out there from the spacecraft
that flew by they're out there and we
have not gone back to me it's also the
beginning of my interest in space
science the first book ever got under
the Christmas tree for me just when I
was a little bit under 10 years old was
to celebrate the upcoming launch of
Voyager at the first Voyager
Voyager 2 and and I had to spoke with me
and it's still in my office if you visit
me at headquarters come look at my voice
evoke for me it was an inspiration we
all is my point have a personal story
that relates to Voyager even if we were
not fortunate enough to be there with
hands on like so many of the people
we're gonna hear about so Voyager today
affects the lives of children of all
ages all over the world no the children
were not born that are going to school
right now when Voyager was still on the
ground well not even their parents were
born for many of them have humanity that
lives today was not born when Voyager
was launched and so really what we're
celebrating today is 40 years of
discovery and exploration history
eclipsing everybody's expectations
nearly 40 years later the successful
Voyager 1 in its sister spacecraft
Voyager 2 continued to provide us with
unprecedented information about the
place in space we live in Voyager 1 has
now travel more than 13 billion miles
from Earth the farthest than any
spacecraft it's now traveling through
the emptiness and loneliness of
interstellar space having left a sphere
of influence of the Sun it's expected to
transmit data until about 2025 if none
of the essential technologies fail or
too is approaching the boundary of the
heliosphere it's just mind-boggling
still going as I said Voyager is the
Apollo 11 of a robotic exploration a
robotic Explorer to the space beyond and
beyond imaginable it is a mission driven
by scientific research and enabled by
innovative technologies a mission of
pioneering and inspiration it's a
mission that has open entirely new
questions that keep us awake at night
today the questions that are subject of
ongoing science investigations Cassini
in its last orbits it's hard to imagine
without Voyager ahead of it the images
of Saturn rings are all over monitors
today on my phone as well and we think
of Enceladus in its ejection of water
from below this icy surface again
starting with Voyager every 50 days or
so we look at new images from Juno and
to stock to a co-investigator on the
mission and of course remember Galileo
the most recent one of the most recent
passes of Juna went our Jupiter's
gigantic storm which has lasted for
millennia getting weaker and we are
imagining the next missions to explore
Europa one of Jupiter's moons which
harbors great surprises we believe below
the icy and cracked crust a whole ocean
of wonders that remain to be explored in
fact we just put an announcement out to
the science community to make the next
step towards understanding the boundary
of that sphere of influence of the Sun
the heliosphere and this mission I map
as we call it is to map out this giant
acceleration region out there and also
detect interstellar gas at ways we've
never seen before again a research topic
started with Voyager because guess what
were dreaming even bigger these
technologies that we have today allow us
to go to Voyager distance we want to go
farther we want to go faster and we're
in menning these technologies because
we're dreaming of course together with
the children of this world about
possibly traveling sometime to other
stars that's the direction Voyager us
has pushed SN so I want to congratulate
to all the generations of the Voyager
team remember of course the ones that
are no longer with us and we still
celebrate the ones who are making
Voyager work today from NASA JPL all the
way to Australia were a big satellite
dish listens to Voyager in the deep sky
congratulation and encouragement that
those worth squeezing every ounce of
science out of these bits these rare and
precious bits star coming from deep
space to us so I want to thank Zeus and
AH the current
Voyager project manager who first begun
working on this mission in 1984 and
Suzanne told me that many of her friends
Ari I know hundred of course I worked
with her you know are here and I'm just
so excited to welcome you all from JPL
who are you know many of you have
started in the 80s some of you have
started more recently and we won't say
who but but I'm just really excited that
you're here and celebrating with us dr.
ed stone is my friend for decades the
retired director of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and on the Voyager
project team since 1972 a major
spokesperson for the Voyager science
team and one of the key contributors to
this science and Rianne co-wrote six new
york time bestsellers with carl sagan
still inspiring to me i keep going back
to these so thanks for all the work that
you've done a creative director of
NASA's voyages interstellar message
project including music images gonna
talk to us about it
Gary flandro who conceived the innovator
here who conceived the planetary Grand
Tour multi planet mission using the
gravity assist technique to reduce the
mission duration from 40 years to less
than 10 years a nasa Eustis of course
with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions
and dr. Alan Cummings another friend for
many years and as I often said one of
the funniest guys in any party will ever
go to look at them my knees up there
don't know what I mean senior scientists
Caltech physicist who works with at
stone studying the nature of particles
entering the solar system from the local
interstellar medium and also locally
accelerated got to here as well and I
want to thank at the National Air and
Space Museum for hosting us it's a
lovely place since I moved to town I'm
here more often than you care I care
Toria you know tell you right now I'm
coming here with my children or by
myself now you all perform a remarkable
service every day educating and
inspiring the public of all ages let
these lonely spacecraft be our
inspiration and drive us to
pushing against the walls of ignorance
to be researchers explorers and in fact
voyagers now with that what I'd like to
do is kick off a movie that was prepared
for this event thank you so much
forty years ago NASA sent to space on a
grand tour of the planets in our solar
system Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were
built to explore and to carry a message
to potential spacefaring civilizations
like a time capsule the golden record
carries a message about her we had six
months to make the Voyager records and
we wanted everything we could possibly
compress into the place allotted on the
records as well as the sounds of Earth
the idea of making a record that we
represent the entire planet the golden
record contains music 115 images to
showcase our whole planet and greetings
in 55 languages booty total moon hello
from the children of planet Earth we
wanted to convey some things enjoy being
alive the golden record is expected to
last nearly 5 billion years we knew that
the spacecraft itself would speak
volumes about us as much perhaps as the
as the message and war which I might add
has decieded its design specifications
in every conceivable way this was a
spacecraft that was supposed to function
for something like a dozen years
here we are 40 years later and we're
still in touch and look at the
discoveries that both voyagers have
given us including most recently the
waterline of the heliopause that place
where the wind from the Sun and the
interstellar medium begins nASA has
every reason to feel the utmost pride
both voyagers are still traveling more
than 35,000 miles per hour
carrying our message to the universe
it's now my pleasure to introduce our
first panel of the day
dr. zaboo canactually already gave them
all pretty good introductions allow me
just to briefly reintroduce them we have
dr. Edie Stone who has been a project
scientist on Voyager from 1972 to the
present we have dr. Gary flandro who is
the boiling chair of excellence in space
propulsion at the University of
Tennessee space Institute and who was
the first to sort of propose the Grand
Tour
multi planet exploration of the outer
planets
we have Alan Cummings Alan Cummings is
been employed at the space radiation
laboratory of Caltech since 1973 and he
is presently a current senior scientist
and member of the professional staff
there we have Suzanne Dodd
Suzanne Dodd is JPL's director for the
interplanetary Network Directorate and
she has over 30 years of experience in
spacecraft operations serving as project
manager role in Voyager and also other
missions and we have Andrian and is the
author an author and lecturer and
television a motion picture writer
producer whose work is largely concerned
with the effects of Science and
Technology on our civilization
she was co-writer of the Emmy and
Peabody award-winning television series
cosmos and she served as creative
director of the NASA Voyager
interstellar message project so without
further ado I will start asking our
panelists a few questions to talk about
the Voyager mission we'll start with dr.
stone
so dr. stone to you what is so special
about Voyager
well many points of view Voyager really
represents humanity's most ambitious
journey of discovery and that's what
really I think is legacy and tell us
about the beginnings of the mission the
early years
Voyager began when Gary flandro who
you'll hear about hear from in a few
minutes discovered that there was a year
nineteen ninety seven plus or minus a
year where where a single spacecraft
would be launched it could fly by all
four giant planets was called the Grand
Tour that was in 1965 by 1972 they had
been sort of downsized to MJS 77 which
is Mariner Jupiter Saturn four year
mission just to those two giant planets
and their moons and rings that
fortunately was to be launched in 1977
however so that if they continued to
work they could go on to Uranus and then
finally Neptune which is what Voyager 2
did completing the grand tour of the
outer planet says Gary had had promised
a way to do that in 12 years rather than
30 years so we really have him to think
that we could do it in a twelve year
journey voyager off obviously has made
many discoveries what are some of your
favorites well if I could have the first
slide please
which shows Jupiter and it's Great Red
Spot along with two of Jupiter's moons
IO and Europa the before Voyager the
only known ball active volcanoes in the
solar system if I could have the first
slide please no sides of the only known
active volcanoes in the solar system
were here on earth and then Voyager flew
by IO a moon of Jupiter about the size
of our Moon but ten times the volcanic
activity of the earth quite a striking
change to be realize the earth was no
longer the most volcanically active body
before Earth the only known liquid water
oceans were here on earth and then
Voyager flew by another Jupiter's moons
called Europa it was covered with ice
and Voyager saw it was cracked ice as
though it were a nice long day on the on
over a liquid water ocean which the
Galileo mission subsequently
demonstrated was indeed the fact there
is a liquid water ocean you see the two
moons in this image IO being the orange
colored one because of the volcanic
activity in Europa being the white one
because of the ice pack the ice icy
crust on to
one of the key issues there was its moon
Titan before Voyager the only known
nitrogen atmosphere in the solar system
was here on earth and then we flew by
Titan which is the fuzzy ball you see
here which has 50% higher pressure
nitrogen atmosphere than here on earth
but has methane natural gas in the
atmosphere not oxygen so the action of
sunlight is to create complex organic
molecules which create this haze that
cannot be seen through in the visible
fortunately the Cassini mission of
appeared several decades later with a
radar system that could look through the
clouds through the haze and saw that
deed there are lakes of liquid methane
liquid natural gas on this moon perhaps
resembling what the early Earth may have
looked like before life evolved on to
Uranus before Voyager the only known the
only all the known magnetic fields all
had their north poles and South Wars or
oriented to be near the rotational axis
of the planet because presumably was
that planet rotation which created the
magnetic field and then it or Uranus and
then at Neptune we found that magnetic
pole was actually nearer the equator
than at pole suddenly our if Terra
centric view from Earth of what magnetic
fields were like we had to be greatly
expanded for the final object we visited
in the solar system was another moon a
moon of Neptune called Triton it's
smaller than our moon is much colder 390
degrees below Fahrenheit and so cold
that the nitrogen is frozen into an icy
polar cap that you see the white polar
cap in the south is nitrogen ice but the
dark streets are geysers erupting and
depositing on and we found two active
geysers at the time we flew by on a
world that is so cold that even the
nitrogen is frozen so Voyager time and
time again caused us to greatly expand
what we knew about plot we knew about
planets what we thought we knew about
rings what we thought we'd do about
magnetic fields what we thought we knew
about moons it's just changed and
created a legacy of discovery now for
many future missions to the outer
planets so dr. flandro I'll ask you a
question next so how did this mission
end up being possible
in the span of only a dozen years well
the key here is to use free energy that
you can it's not using Rockets now we're
using some free energy which I will
explain let's put the first slide out
like use that I think to show first
slide okay
this is actually the result of thousands
of calculations I've had to run
thousands and thousands of numerical
calculations of trajectories looking for
the possible outer planet mission this
was my favorite here and the first one
that was published showing a 1978 launch
from the earth
I put this up so that you can get some
idea about the angles that you have to
deflect the trajectory through to gain
energy by the way so I start from the
earth here in September 1978 on that
little tiny dot on that dashed line
making 135 degree turn over to Jupiter
and here's now where we start gaining
energy if I didn't do anything if I
didn't go past Jupiter I would come
right back to the earth basically on
Noonie lips and I want to go back past
Jupiter I get a tremendous slingshot
effect Jupiter is moving along and it's
pulling this with its gravity field we
sometimes call that gravity assist adds
a tremendous boost of energy I used to
like to tell my students that if I took
a spacecraft the size of the voyager
about a volkswagen size that that's
equivalent to about four Saturn five
rockets waiting for you out there if you
could hook those up you can really get a
tremendous boost in speed now it's never
going to come back we've lost a
spacecraft it's on a hyperbolic orbit
now heads over there to Saturn
you're gonna ask me in a minute where
did I figure this out I'll show you
anyway and we get to Saturn and in this
one in 1978 I I'd love this one because
I could get so fast I would get clear
out to Neptune in about seven and a half
years to do it you'll see with Saturn
see the little rings there I have to go
between the planet and the Rings okay
which some that scares people although
Cassini has been doing that now recently
okay and you get a huge boost and you
can get them to you're a
really quickly and then on to Neptune
and then we're on the way out of the
solar system that's where we go
interstellar at that point but the
interesting thing here and by the way
Here I am doing these things I say how
could we ever sell this but the key to
selling it is to notice that some
important event happens within four year
time spans if it doesn't then you're
never gonna get any money from the
government right so anyway that's what
made it work and let me show you how we
found it let's go onto the next slide
please
the next slide shows the actual thing
that I use to figure out that you could
do it along the bottom are the dates I
was looking for the next 10 or 20 years
from when I was working in 1965 on the
top on the other axis vertical axis
these are the angles I was showing you
in that last slide and I could see
something really remarkable here that in
the later 18 1980s or so all of the
tracks of the outer planets crossed so
that the planets were all on the same
side of the Sun we said oh my gosh I
better look there because that means you
could probably get one spacecraft that
could hit all of those planets which is
what happened and that's that's how it
was discovered and then off now the hard
work starts you have to run all these
trajectories until you find the best
launch windows let me tell you the
answer there was 1977 1978 and the real
problem here is that only recurs every
175 years so if you missed this one
you've lost it because it takes time you
know to build a spacecraft we had about
10 years to do it and the last time this
opportunity ever came was about and was
when Thomas Jefferson was president
president and he muffed it
so you've already anticipated one of the
other questions but let me ask you it
the first successful gravity assist was
1974 with Mariner 10 so how did you know
that this would work or what other
problems did you think might happen I
knew it would work because astronomers
have known about it since the 1700s and
a lot of people since then have loan
that you if you just fly past a planet
you will gain their to lose energy
depending on which way you pass so I
knew it would work everybody knew it
would work we demonstrated that also
with the Mariner of Earth Venus Mercury
of trajectories and so on so yes it was
we knew it would work no problem just
get any money to do it with the Horde
will move on to Alan Cummings dr.
Cummings tell us how you first got
involved in Voyager okay well actually I
got involved with Voyager because I lost
the experiment I had been working on it
went missing in action seriously what
happened was I was up in Fort Churchill
Canada in 1973 the summer of 73 and I
was doing what we had been doing for
years which was attach our experiment to
the bottom of a huge balloon sitting to
the top of the atmosphere and where we
took our measurements and the idea was
it drifts west about 500 miles during
the course of a day then you cut it down
you bring it down you recover it and you
bring it back you start all over again
but this particular time and I think
this is the only time in history this
has ever happened the command to cut it
down didn't work and the backup cut down
timer didn't work so it just kept going
and went right around the world it went
around the world twice actually one and
a half times because the second time
over Russia they noticed it and they got
it
and so that ended that experiment and I
got back to Caltech all dejected and
they said well how would you like to
start working on a new project called
MJS 77 which was the early name for
Voyager and I said okay and that's been
the rest is history I've been working on
it ever since and now looking back in on
1973 and losing that balloon it wasn't
all that bad
I mean I got to start working on the
grittiest mission ever really so you got
you were put in the right place at the
right time with idle hands yes yeah so
tell me about your experiences with
Voyager what are some of your memories
of it okay well right off the bat one of
the early ones was that I think I was
the last person to physically touch the
spacecraft right during the last step of
a capsulation of the spacecraft we were
worried about our fragile windows on our
instruments so I was allowed to crawl up
in there climb up in there and inspect
them and part of the inspection process
was to make sure that the little windows
were tight on the telescope's so I gave
each one a little twist so it is eerie
to think if I was the last person to
touch him the next person to touch him
is going to be a space 18 the other
thing and bring up this slide here yes
this is a picture of our cosmic raid
team looking our first data in 1977 from
Voyager 2 and I'm the one by the way in
the front they're bent over I was the
only one apparently that could read the
data upside down but it looks like at
the time this picture was taken we were
not completely convinced this instrument
was working but it was and it has been
ever since for 40 years in space but for
me I'm a cosmic great physicist so the
giving Voyager one into interstellar
space was that's sort of the holy grail
in my area of research that's the first
time you can measure the low energy part
of the cosmic ray distribution due to
solar activity those particles are not
detectable inside the heliosphere so you
could only do it when you get there and
now we're there and we've measured it
and that's important for a lot of
different reasons but one is that
galactic cosmic rays are a hazard to
astronauts on long-duration missions and
now we know that the Sun goes quiet for
an extended period what is the maximum
intensity of cosmic rays if the
astronauts would have to deal with let
me ask you a question maybe you can
explain to us how do we know that
Voyager is out in in interstellar space
okay so that took quite a while to sort
out actually from our cosmic-ray data we
said immediately the way they behaved we
said okay yes we just entered
interstellar space on August 25th 2012
but then the magnetometer people came
along and said but you know the magnetic
field Direction didn't change at all so
that would mean that the sun's magnetic
field and the galaxy's magnetic field
were lined up and that didn't seem
likely so then the plasma wave team came
to the rescue and that's show it here in
a minute but anyway so the Sun sent out
some big blast waves had sent out some
big blast waves and they reached the
vicinity of Voyager 1 and it caused the
plasma to oscillate and the plasma wave
experiment measures the frequency of
those oscillations and it turns out if
you know the frequency of those
oscillations and then you know the
density of the plasma and that's shown
here these colored splotches are
represent detection of the oscillations
and it turns out the density that the
inferred is the density expected in
interstellar space and not inside the
heliopause so that's when we knew that
Voyager 1 had gone interstellar and by
the way modelers and theorists are
coming to grips with the magnetometer
data and figuring out that why that
happened and it's just the interaction
between the heliosphere in their stellar
medium is a little more complicated we
first thought dr. Dodd you're currently
managing the Voyager interstellar
mission so maybe we can start by asking
you where exactly our Voyager 1 and
Voyager 2 I like to say that the joy of
having two spacecraft is as you as Ellis
saying you have to have a model that
fits both data points so we have two
spacecraft they're identical Voyager one
is the one that if you look on this
graphic it's sort of going up and out
toward the nose it's in interstellar
space has of August 25th 2012 Voyager 2
is going down and out of the plane of
the planet it has yet to cross the
boundary into interstellar space that's
probably the number
question than anybody that works on the
project gets but I always defer that
question to dr. stone
so Voyager 1 was actually launched
second but it is traveling the fastest
it's the furthest spacecraft from us at
13 billion miles it travels at 38,000
miles per hour approximately nothing's
going to catch up to it and Voyager 2 is
traveling a little bit slower 34,000
miles per hour approximately but that's
still 40 times the speed of sound here
on earth so moving that so far away how
do we communicate with these spacecraft
ok well because the voyagers are so far
away they need to use the Deep Space
Network antennas which are very very
large arrayed dishes there they're 70
meter antennas as well as 34 meter your
antennas and they're located in
Australia and in Spain and here in
California I'm not in California now my
apologies back in my home in California
and so the way Voyager operates it's
slightly different than other missions
in the sense that most of the data comes
down continuously in real time sent down
to the earth and we captured the data
with the Deep Space Network antennas so
when we're listening to that data we
capture the data and we we capture data
from both spacecraft about four to six
hours a day from each spacecraft we send
commands to the spacecraft approximately
once a week a lot of times those
commands are just how are you how are
you doing now because of the distance
the round-trip flight time for Voyager 1
is 38 hours so what that means as us as
engineers we're in our office on a
Monday afternoon we type a command that
says hello to Voyager send it off we
come back into the office not Tuesday
but Wednesday morning and Voyager says
I'm fine how are you doing
so it's more than a day and a half
roundtrip
like time for Voyager 1 and that has its
own challenges in communicating with the
spacecraft and how are the voyagers
doing well pull up the next slide and
the voyagers are healthy and as healthy
as senior citizens can be that's the way
I like to think of them their twin
spacecraft identical and think of them
as twin sisters senior citizens sisters
so each has had different elements over
the years
for example Voyager 2 is tone deaf every
time we send a command to the spacecraft
we have to put it in a few different
frequencies in order for the spacecraft
to hear it
Voyager 1 does not have an active
operating plasma science instrument and
what that means is that where do one
cannot really directly feel the solar
wind and the high-energy charged
particles coming from the Sun has Alan
explained it sort of had to infer that
from a different instrument so each of
the spacecrafts were had redundant Suns
subsystems when they were launched and
over time you know certain things have
broken we've had to go to the backup
systems we've also turned things off
power is our limiting resource we use a
radioisotope thermoelectric generators
on Voyager they're the the the big
canister booms out here on the on the
left side of the image you're seeing and
we lose four watts of power a year so
now especially going into our fifth
decade of operations the real key is how
long to make this spacecraft operate and
and when we have to start turning off
instruments and how long can we last and
it's a it's a balance between the
engineering and the science desires and
we hope to keep this mission operating
have science instruments operating at
least one into 2025 it might be a little
bit longer 2026 2027 we're not sure but
personally I hope that I can sit here
ten years from now with all these folks
and talk about the 50th anniversary of
Voyager launch and still have them
flying well and you know the golden
record
is probably one of the most well known
objects in the history of space
exploration what can you tell us about
it that maybe we don't already know well
you know a lot of people think that it
was just the whim of Carl Sagan and one
or two other people but in fact we
consulted ethnomusicologists all over
the world who haven't really gotten
there just to in terms of the beautiful
music that they brought to us many
people have said in the decades since
that the Voyager record is kind of the
beginning of world music and that was
very much due to Karl's planetary
perspective and our desired not just to
represent the Imperial culture that had
created the spacecraft but also all of
different ways that we found to express
the joy of being alive and so I found
something out about the Voyager record
two days ago but I never knew in all
these 40 years and that was there's a
Peruvian wedding song which is sung by a
child in the Andes who was recorded by a
wonderful ethnomusicologist named John
Cohen and we had never thought to ask
what the words in Quechua mean we just
knew it was a wedding song and we just
found out that it is a scathing
indictment of anthem of the male
chauvinism of that culture and the
nightmare of being a powerless woman in
that society which was team as a
complete revelation to me so you know I
think there there are so many
revelations hidden deep within the 27
pieces of music the sound essay the
greetings from the humans and the
humpback whales is it let you learn well
it's it's sounds like it's been very
meaningful for you you've found a lot of
meaning in the in the record have you
imagined what it would actually sort of
say about humans to a totally alien
species if they discovered it
fortunately every single night of my
life
I've imagined I stare at lucky enough to
have that beautiful golden cover edge
with the scientific hieroglyphics and I
stare at it and I've imagined on
countless nights you know because it's
real I really are moving between 35 and
40 thousand miles an hour the hair is
real as we are and so to to try to
imagine traveling alongside the
spacecraft and then to think that be
design specifications you know that
Voyager has a six exceeded NASA's
fondest craziest dreams for it and so
when they say you know the records gonna
last for one to five billion years I say
you know here we are 40 years later
could be even more than that space is
very empty the chances are very small of
it being intercepted either them being
intercepted but I have imagined
countless times you know some grad
student on some interstellar steamer who
has a whole you know collection of these
artifacts from these adolescent
technological civilizations that just
can't wait to tell the cosmos what they
can do and you know popping it on the
stylus which we included listening to it
and maybe rocking out to Johnny be good
and thinking wow these guys they they
knew how to party that sounds like the
basis for a great book we now have time
for a couple of audience questions yes
hi I'm Emily for far from NASA's social
media we have a lot of questions on
social this first one comes from Twitter
and it's from mr. Ian can you elaborate
on your brainwave EEG that's inscribed
on the golden disk and the love story
inside oh joy I would be happy to talk
about that so while we were
the Voyager record at CBS studios in
Manhattan one day I asked Carl if it was
possible if I were to meditate and all
of the impulses that my body was giving
off you know the my EKG my EEG every you
know REM every single thing was it
conceivable that the extraterrestrials
of a distant time could reconstitute
this meditation and interpret it and I
remember Carl's
beaming at me and saying you know
million years is a long time Annie go do
it so I went to NYU Medical Center was
hooked up to a computer which was the
size of a vast room probably much more
feeble computing power than in our
iPhones and and I was blindfolded and
centrally deprived and I meditated for
an hour about the history of the planet
its geology its biology its emerging
technology to the best of my very
limited abilities told the story of our
species history of our civilization
since the invention of Agriculture but
this was also just a few days after Carl
Sagan and I realized how deeply in love
we were and had told each other on June
1st 1977 in the throes of this mythic
undertaking to speak for earth for
billions of years and so part of my
meditation is the joy of a 27 year old
woman madly in love truly in love as
every single heartbeat since that moment
can affirm so that that's on Voyager and
if that can be interpreted then then in
some sense it keeps us all alive
and the deepest feelings and the
greatest joys we've ever known we have
one more question
one more question from social do you
think Voyager 2 will reach the
heliopause before its nuclear power
batteries are exhausted will it reach
the heliopause over Voyager 2 yes we
certainly expect so we don't know of
course this is exploration but it's of
several more years but of that order not
to 10 more years if we don't reach it in
10 years that will be a very big
surprise okay well we have a second
panel coming up that's going to be a
couple of younger scientists whose lives
and careers have been impacted by
Voyager but first we have something we
think we're you're gonna find very cool
we're gonna throw things over to JPL to
Mission Control for the Voyager
interstellar mission and there we have
Tracy drain to explain what's going to
happen so Tracy
Thanks I'm Traci drain the deputy chief
engineer for the Juno mission managed by
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in
Pasadena California this is Mission
Control for the Deep Space Network this
is where spacecraft from all over the
solar system and beyond communicate with
the earth through a set of large antenna
distributed around the world in what we
call the Deep Space Network
the voyagers have been communicating
with us this way for four decades and in
fact we're in a communication pass with
Voyager one today you can see on this
live screen behind me that we're talking
to Voyager 1 with station 63 in
celebration of 40 years of continuing
exploration with the voyagers we
launched a campaign called message to
Voyager
which was inspired by the uplifting
messages on voyagers golden records so
we asked you to submit messages of
goodwill that we took and selected the
top ones and put out to a vote these had
to be short missions short messages no
more than 60 characters so we're gonna
reveal today what you chose as the
winning message and send that all the
way out towards Voyager 1 in
interstellar space this is Geoff burner
and he is the DSN chief engineer hi I'm
Tracy how are you doing I'm doing great
thanks so can you tell us what's gonna
be done with the message today
okay well the selected message is 56
characters long which translates into
448 bits and we put it into a void void
your command message format and sending
it at the Voyager rate of 16 bits per
second which means it'll take 28 seconds
for the message to be totally
transmitted once it's transmitted it'll
take about a little over 19 and a
quarter hours for it to be passed by
Voyager on this way to interstellar
space having it will have traveled
twelve point nine billion miles okay and
just how is it going to be sent okay so
we are transmitting from the 70-meter
antenna outside of Madrid Spain which we
call deep space station 63 and to give
you an idea how big this antenna is the
70 meters is about 3/4 the length of a
football field that's pretty fantastic
thank you Jeff I was only two years old
when the Voyageurs watched but by the
time I got to elementary school we had
already started getting back images of
Jupiter and Saturn that were really
fantastic and helped inspire me to be
interested in space exploration and
growing up to be an engineer my mom was
also very interested in science fiction
especially Star Trek I've been a Trekkie
since just about I can remember and I
loved how at the end of Voyager the
motion picture feature the alien
spacecraft turned out to be a long-lost
Voyager series probe so who better to
help us send today's message to Voyager
than Captain Kirk that's right
William Shatner is with us in Mission
Control today what an honor I'm so
pleased to be here it's a magical place
JPL and this is a magical moment to send
a message to Voyager and once it reaches
Voyager it keeps going so it's like an
advance man voyage you're coming wide
you're coming you know to all the little
green people out there that's right it's
pretty exciting can't wait to see or
hear maybe and some years from here if
anybody says hello back to it wouldn't
that be something amazing so also here
with us today is DSN command engineer
Annabel Kennedy and she's gonna be ready
to send the message on your command
she's gonna press the button that's
right so this message was composed by
some individuals that was chosen by
committee
once all the attempts to to show us to
give us a message there was 30,000 or
something like that's right 30,000
people sometimes people communicated and
this was winnow down to ten and now one
of the ten has been chosen and you're
going to give me the envelope and I've
done this on award show they are pleased
and we read the message that's exactly
right and and
we'll press the button and the message
will go out to Voyager to get there
something hours late I am so excited I
wonder what they are what they're what
they wanted us to say only what there's
less than 60 characters that's a half a
half a tweet that's right it's not a lot
of space in order to put in a really
without a lot of space for a large
perfect yeah
can we have the envelope please all
right so now I'm going to open it up and
all of her Jenkins
all of her Jenkins is the message that's
been selected and this is Annabel this
is the message am I going to read it out
yeah let's have you read it
we offer friendship across the stars you
are not alone fantastic what a great
message by Oliver Jenkins I love that
are you gonna send it out now the
hailing frequencies for the Trekkies
okay I'm an engineer animal Kennedy send
the message on your command and we are
active on three two one active and we
are radiating message to Voyager at 17
2001 delighted I mean when you think of
the mysterious void that's out there and
what little we know and we're sending a
message out and it goes into the Stars
it goes we don't know how long that'll
take
how long will that take no no I don't
mean how long I mean this this
electrical impulse traveling just be
like goes does it ever decay it can't it
will spread out eventually over many
many many many light-years yes but
eventually if there's something out
there with that with a big enough
antenna that can listen yeah I thought
you don't need big antennas they have
little little time so it spreads out and
goes forever
it just goes forever because it's a
light it's a photon it's radio signals
that are going at electromagnetic
frequencies yeah right mm-hmm
but it's not a photon
okay I am so happy thank you so much
it's been thank you very much for being
with you and we're gonna pass it back
out to Matthew in Washington DC so we're
back at the National Air and Space
Museum here on the Smithsonian grounds
of the National Mall and we have our
second panel we have two new folks
joining the panel I won't introduce
reintroduce the folks you already know
but we have dr. Morgan cable dr. cable
is research scientist at the NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena
California she earned her PhD in
chemistry from Caltech in 2010 studying
life in extreme environments currently
dr. Kable is assistant project systems
engineer for the Cassini mission which
has been exploring the Saturn system now
for 13 years and she's also a
collaborator on the mapping imaging
spectrometer for Europa an instrument
selected for NASA's next mission to
Jupiter's icy moon and dr. Eric Zurn is
an associate research scholar in the
Department of Astrophysical sciences at
Princeton University where he
specializes in the simulation and
analysis of physical processes related
to the solar wind and its interaction
with the interstellar medium
he received his BS MS and PhD in physics
at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville and he has published
peer-reviewed articles interpreting
observations made by NASA the NASA
missions Voyager interstellar boundary
Explorer and New Horizons so a couple of
very accomplished young scientists so
let me start by asking dr. Kable a few
questions
how has Voyager influenced your career
as a scientist well Voyager's had an
immense impact I think on all the
careers of scientists and engineers of
my generation for me personally it's
been more an impact that the people have
made being able to work at JPL and
Caltech alongside people like Ed Stone
High has been amazing dr. Linda's poker
the project scientist for the Cassini
mission has taken me under her wing and
through her mentorship I've really been
able to to excel with this knowledge
passed down from these Voyager veterans
it's really been an incredible way to
start to find my own path as a scientist
in in planetary science and space
exploration and which planets have you
studied that Voyager explored planets
I'm gonna say moons are more exciting
for me so I'm really interested in
astrobiology and thanks to the amazing
discoveries of Voyager and then building
on those with Cassini and hopefully
future spacecraft I'm really excited
about a lot of these ocean worlds these
places like Europa around Jupiter or
Enceladus and Titan around Saturn places
that have liquid water oceans underneath
icy crust they seem to have all the
ingredients at least that we know of for
life to survive a water chemistry and
energy and here if we can show this is a
an image that Voyager took of Enceladus
this is one of those ocean worlds in
orbit around Saturn back when Voyager
was Voyager 2 right Edie was doing its
flyby yes we captured this amazing image
and you can see that this is one of the
whitest and brightest moons in the solar
system
now unfortunately Voyager 2 scan
platform jammed so it was not able to at
that time get an image of Enceladus as
it was leaving sort of passing by Saturn
if it had it might have captured an
image of the plume that now we know is
emanating out of the South Pole if we go
to the next slide you'll see this is an
image that was captured by Cassini which
was the follow-on mission that is still
at least for the next ten days in the
Saturn system encourage you all
September 15th early in the morning to
watch the the final grand finale of that
mission captured this amazing image and
the next slide this is what Voyager 2
would have seen had that scan scan
platform been working this is some
material that's coming out of these four
giant tiger stripes in the south polar
terrain of Enceladus this is free ocean
water spewing into space and thanks to
Voyager we know about these amazing
worlds missions like Cassini and
hopefully some future spacecraft are
building on that knowledge
and it's just such a fun time to be a
planetary scientist so we can better
understand this is there anything on
earth that you could compare these two
let's see the best comparison I think
for these types of plume emanations
would be maybe a geyser like Gacy or in
Iceland or something like that but the
scale is very very different those
geysers maybe spray what a few tens of
meters at most into the air but these
plumes that are emanating from Enceladus
single plume sorry many Jets forming a
single plume
spew out at least 50 miles and really
more they form that earring that's
around Saturn one of the Rings is being
formed because of this material coming
out of Enceladus so what are your plans
for the future what do you want to
explore next oh all the things I want to
explore everything but Enceladus is top
of the list I would say Europa as well
NASA is currently working on a mission
called the Europa clipper mission that
I'm lucky enough to be a part of we also
have a few more in the works there's
this proposed Europa Lander concept that
we're really hoping will move forward
and then looking further out these
fascinating places like Triton around
Neptune it's orbiting backwards it's
spewing volcanoes of nitrogen and
methane and amazing stuff in the space
there's so much to explore great well
doctors Ernst ein how did you first get
involved in heliosphere research I'd
have to say it started when I was an
undergraduate at my university I was
taking a computer physics programming
class and our professor came in one day
and showed us these new observations
that the interstellar boundary Explorer
was just taking the interstellar
boundary Explorer is or short for ibex
is an Earth orbiting spacecraft that
detects neutral atoms that are created
in the outer heliosphere so these
neutral atoms are created at distances
where Voyager spacecraft are and they
travel through space and can be detected
at Earth
so our professor showed us these
observations said these are really
exciting but totally unexpected and we
have a brief animation we can show so
ibex takes a what we call a sky map so a
total picture of the sky
within six months and what it does is
you can see on the sky map there's the
pixels for Voyager 1 V 1 and Voyager 2
on the bottom these are where they're
going away from the Sun away from the
earth and in the background is what ibex
sees it sees all these neutral atoms
from every direction in space but what
was totally unexpected is this band
going across the middle of the sky that
we call the ibex ribbon and they said
essentially excited everyone that was
working on it and I decided to do my
undergraduate project with him on it and
it's been like that ever since well we
see Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in your
graphic how is your work intersected
with the Voyager exploration well
Voyager gives the ground truth to what
we heliosphere physicists see and ibex
observations so ibex gives a global
picture but Voyager actually tells us
what's actually happening in location in
space so using them simultaneously is
really important for our research so
ever since it was officially confirmed
that Voyager 1 had crossed the
heliopause
those unexpected strange magnetic field
observations were maybe not actually
that strange after all so this graphic
were showing if you first imagine the
solar wind coming out from the Sun it
goes and just comes out radially from
the Sun and fills a bubble in space
calls called the heliopause it's sort of
like the comet shade so this blue light
blue surface is the surface of that
bubble and then outside of it is
interstellar space and you can see the
top row is where Voyager 1 is outside
the heliopause it's still pretty close
on these scales and the bottom black
arrow is Voyager 2 but it's still inside
so there's no picture and what we can
see in this simulation is that the
magnetic field lines which are those
black curves snaking from the top left
to the bottom right are showing us how
the magnetic field is wrapping around
this view
pause surface and we believe that what
Voyager is telling us is how these
magnetic field lines are draping around
the heliosphere and as it propagates
farther away from the Sun it's going to
tell us more about how this isn't how
far this interaction goes and what about
your plans for the future what do you
hope to see in the future of
interstellar exploration well we can
continue to see more observations from
Voyager 1 as it goes at what 38,000
miles per hour and it's going to provide
us with more and more important
observations for the at least the next
10 years and but our community we're
definitely expecting voyager 2 is going
to cross the hilly pause down at the
bottom there and we believe it's going
to be in the next few years but we're
just gonna have to wait and see but what
voyager have has shown us is not only is
it exciting and astounding to see all
these observations but it's definitely
capable we're definitely capable of
capable of doing this and hopefully it's
going to be one of many in the future
great fantastic so now i think we have
some time for some audience questions
and i think we also have a social media
question if anyone from the audience has
a question you can make your way over to
the microphone in this aisle over here
hello this is really an inspiring day
thank you for this and thank you guys
for all you've done I've always been
curious as a space buff since childhood
when my dad took me to see Saturn when
we send out these inspirational messages
and the record and so on as slim as the
chance is that they'll be found was
there ever any concern that they might
not be nice green people
great fear about the nature of the
extraterrestrials someone as brilliant
and illustrious as Stephen Hawking has
expressed a kind of sense like don't let
them know we're here but it's too late
for that because of our radio signals as
described earlier we've been
broadcasting for something on the order
of a century and the word is out that
we're here what I find so puzzling is
that and maybe just because I've been so
lucky to have such a really wonderful
life is that we always assume that the
extraterrestrials will have to be
technologically much more advanced than
we are because after all there's
spacefaring sufficiently they're
sufficiently good at it that they can
flag down a derelict spacecraft in the
middle of nowhere so there are
technological again technologically
advanced but we always assume that they
will be just as emotionally and
spiritually stunted as we are so that
they will treat us the way we treat the
rest of life on this planet the way we
treat each other
and I say beautiful until proven up Lee
that's really it just makes no sense to
me that you could be that good at
traveling in space mastering the
planetary quarantine that we're born
into figuring out all of the
difficulties and challenges of actually
being a spacefaring civilization and
still be out there hunting for lunch or
for you know something to wear it just
doesn't it doesn't strike me as
practical and so I say you know the
voyagers are literally as they've often
been called their messages cast in a
bottle in the great ocean of space they
move so slowly that you know our radio
signals out run them at the speed of
light what may plot along and maximum
forty thousand miles an hour so not to
worry
yeah dr. stoner I was involved in the
flyby of Neptune and when we were by
Triton you could see those dark clouds
few fools there was speculation they
were hydrocarbons and a very low
temperature
did that ever move out or was it
something else you know I know a little
bit about that so Triton surface is
mostly nitrogen and methane ice and so
what happens is as Triton moves through
the seasons you have it's methane snow
right that moves and condenses so it
moves from pole to pole and when some
hydrocarbons like methane or nitrogen
get trapped underneath some of the snow
and it starts to warm up it turns to a
gas and it starts to vent out and that's
what you're seeing and I believe that
dark marks are very similar to the Thole
in another material that we see on Titan
which is when methane and some other
small molecules interact with UV
radiation and some other energetic
sources in our solar system it forms
larger molecules that are darker in
color Dolan was actually coined by Carl
Sagan from the Greek term tholos which
means muddy because they're sort of
muddy colored right this question comes
from Twitter and they're asking when is
the next opportunity for a mission that
could fly by or orbit Neptune or Uranus
try that one since it takes a long time
with keto with chemical propulsion we
would have to use gravity assist so I
think there are hundreds of
possibilities within the next ten years
or so to do that can be done at least
Uranus Orbiter has been included in the
most recent NASA to Keadle survey so
there are a lot of ice giant scientists
they're huge proponents as I'm sure we
all are of exploring these fantastic
systems another audience question hi
Alyce McGraw from the National Academies
in lunar and planetary lab I've got a
question about the spacecraft itself and
debris I know that you're measuring
plasma
what about dust and do you expect it to
be Swiss cheese at this point but
structurally its space is really empty
and the the gold cover you see you there
in the image is a fact a dust cover
that's not the record the records is
behind it that cover is thick enough
it's there because micrometeorites in
space would in fact disrupt and pit the
grooves in the record but they believe
that just that thin plate which is there
is more than enough to give a billion
year lifetime against this kind of dust
damage so it's very unlikely these are
tiny micro meteorites yes
inning of this whole thing when we were
first proposing this everybody told me
that you're wasting your time you cannot
get through the asteroid belt with that
spacecraft you just forget it you're not
gonna make it through but I don't think
there was ever any sign of any problem
going through with advances in
information storage to crowdsource like
we did for the message to the Voyager
today how do you think the process of
making another project like the golden
record would be and how different you
think the end result would be well first
of all yes the opportunity to compress
so much I mean really we are
nanotechnologies and our abilities to
compress we could send the entire
Internet
on the next really epic mission we could
send the whole you know it works on all
everything we are without any difficulty
it was a challenge in 1977 to select the
amount you know pieces of music the
winnowing process was heartbreaking at
times for the images for the sounds for
the music for the greetings precisely
because of the finite space available on
a phonograph record still it was in made
the most sense at the time to maximize
the amount of information we could sent
but if we were gonna send it now you
know I'm there's a project that I have
peripheral association with breakthrough
which is contemplating it's called
breakthrough starshot kind of planning
sending nano craft the Sai each craft a
flotilla of a thousand craft each craft
the size of a lentil with greater
capabilities and each of the Voyager and
a tiny little light sail moving not 40
thousand miles an hour but ultimately if
it's successful a significant fraction
of a speed of life so the you know be
the possibilities are virtually infinite
if we just get our act together here on
earth I believe we have time for two
more questions I certainly have enjoyed
listening to all of you young and old
that and to see that Voyager has a
future but there's something going
around on the internet that I hope maybe
you can all somebody can describe and
that is the effect that pioneer and
Voyager had on getting rid of Planet X
pioneer pioneer 10 they they tracked the
spacecraft very accurately and in look
and they thought that there had found a
small residual acceleration that was not
accounted for by known physics and that
would be very exciting if there was new
physics was affecting gravity on a
larger scale it turns out they've
reanalyzed the data and they've analyzed
more of it analyze it for a pig both
minor 10 11 and have concluded
unfortunately it was really material
properties having to do with the
spacecraft radiating the heat away from
the Sun and there is no evidence that
there's new physics that's involved
first I want to thank NASA for ruining
my seventh birthday because he threw the
first one up five days before when
everybody started remembering then you
threw another one right behind it so
anyway what I would like know is like
the most white knuckle or scariest
moment during a mission process clearly
that the scariest time was on Voyager 2
when we lost one receiver and found that
the back up receiver no longer could
tune to the frequency we were sending so
we had to learn how to send the right
frequency so the spacecraft could I
learned how to do that but that was a
very scary period of several months
while we sorted out what happened and
what the workaround goes but we've flown
the entire mission now with this kind of
tone-deaf receiver and so that's fine
there there are many such things that
happen on real missions and normally you
don't hear about them because once they
get fixed to sort of old news so we're
very lucky that there's been no
catastrophic failure or neither
spacecraft yet but you know that's just
the risk of space I mean things do
happen that you can't fix I want to
thank our second panel for doing a
wonderful job and really giving us some
great history and future of the Voyager
project
and I want to turn things over to Ann
Druyan who is going to present the final
part of our day's activities well what
day before you up on the screen is
voyagers final look homeward a picture
that was taken because Carl Sagan
lobbied endlessly to have it taken there
was reluctance to take it because to
look homeward was to look back to the
Sun which meant the possibility that the
lenses would burn out but as Carl kept
pointing out well we're not going to
take any more pictures and he knew that
it would be important for us to see our
home planet not as the frame filling
Apollo image which was such a sea chain
and they change in the history of our
civilization I remember seeing the Earth
from space for the first time and seeing
it filled the frame and believing for
the first time in a kind of visceral way
yes we live on a world that moves
through space but this is what we really
need to take to our hearts right this
moment because that's not the frame
filling center of the universe image of
the earth but our true circumstances we
live on a one pixel world in the scale
of the solar system forget about the
scale of the galaxy forget about the
scale of the hundred billion galaxies
forget about heart of the universe that
we have yet to apprehend we only
understand and really know such a small
part of it and that's really as Carl
wrote so beautifully and I'm so glad
that NASA
acceded to Carl's wishes and took that
picture you know in the Bible it says
you
to have it for frontlet between thine
eyes and see it as though walkest by the
way in the morning and the night see
that see that and teach that to everyone
you know so that we can begin to treat
each other the way we should the way in
a way that would be worthy of our
children and grandchildren thank you
okay Thank You Ann and thank you to all
of our panelists and speakers today on
behalf of the Smithsonian National Air
and Space Museum thank you all for
joining us as our audience today and
please come and visit us when you can
