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.

[@AayushSaxena100]

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

[@alperman5]

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!

[@funguy4utube]

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 !

[@ronwenger5133]

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.

[@gamestv4875]

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

[@cygnus1129]

Imagine how many stars you can see out there.. Even if the sun is a bright point its gotta be like endless glowing sand grains!!

[@blackpanda7612]

@@cygnus1129 As the antenna is pointed back towards the sun, the other side of the craft must have the best view of the stars as its in the shade of the sunlight. Must be crazy sight

[@stclairstclair]

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

[@kevinbrown4073]

The return on investment in terms of basic scientific knowledge is off the charts.

[@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 😉

[@jzhao9058]

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!!

[@paulcarpenter999]

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

[@kevinbrown4073]

They will hit 50 no sweat only problem is sending transmission back to earth

[@colmocallaghan6626]

@@kevinbrown4073 indeed as at 2022 Voyager 1 is 18 light hours away, sending a signal and wait for reply takes nearly 2 days and it's getting longer and weaker as Voyager 1 speeds away into interstellar space.

[@kevinbrown4073]

@@colmocallaghan6626 hot take between voyager and Webb telescope why do we bother with manned space flight

[@colmocallaghan6626]

@@kevinbrown4073I agree, manned space flight is only for human achievement but nothing else, everybody works from home these days and space exploration should be no different, the Marian rovers on Mars are doing a great job at a fraction of the cost without having to send humans, remote working from earth, no need to send humans at a huge cost.

[@phajejekly8922]

Not all heroes wears capes

[@Lizardbrainzzz]

Just like how some people have no sense of grammar

[@thegowland]

@@Lizardbrainzzz shut up. His comment was beauitfull. Get a life

[@thegowland]

Well said phajEJEK. Well put mate.❤

[@wesleysampaio815]

And nota all heroes is not human

[@patkennedy2620]

Excellent post👍 PhajE

[@videoshoot7]

Amazing accomplishments in 40 years!

[@LarS1963]

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

[@bingewatch_reallygraceful635]

Yeah....Well Freema$on's tricks are less convincing with research.

[@iainnicholson4399]

It's only gotten worse

[@fresatx]

Birds aren't real!

[@Derrick6162]

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

[@filter4now]

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

[@exospaceman8209]

The greatest mission of all time

[@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.

[@kittyparty6925]

Thanks for posting this!

[@dasautogt]

Brilliant. Thank you. 👏👏

[@PacoOtis]

Excellent! Thanks for sharing!

[@MrPerrey]

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

[@melplishka5978]

Well 6 more years and the 50th anniversary of the voyagers . Can’t wait lol.

[@danielxplay2211]

Happy 41st anniversary voyagers

[@MattJohno2]

Just over 400 years till we launch anything else named Voyager

[@caseykunz7800]

It's not a far fetched idea that millions and or billions of years from now the only trace of humanity could be the Voyagers, out there somewhere... pretty much forever...

[@manuell3505]

A surface and atmosphere containing O2, the result of photosynthesis. The evidence of the past presence of life.

[@blessingsofparadise4439]

You all deserve a hearty, warm 🎇🛰️📡🔭🚀🛸🪐🌌🌠🎁🎀🎈🎉🎐🪅💫🌟🎋🎑🥇🏆🎨🎆 *Standing Ovation,* 🎇🛰️📡🔭🚀🛸🪐🌌🌠🎁🎀🎈🎉🎐🪅💫🌟🎋🎑🥇🏆🎨🎆indeed, many 🤙🤙mahalos and shaka's 🤙🤙from Hawaii‼️‼️‼️‼️❗❗❗❗

[@joseimpact]

god bless all those people who pushed the technology to its edge

[@minlunp3037]

You are all a legend, will be remembered forever 👍

[@RamKumar-eq9hm]

Great........... ........... By Ramkumar

[@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.)

[@jimbob1427]

Humans greatest achievement in my opinion

[@scottietoohotti]

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

[@ugowar]

As someone whose adolescence was marked by Cassini, NASA's big flagship to Saturn, I still can't help but acknowledge and awe at the the fact that the Voyager project, especially Voyager 2 was the greatest single solar system exploration enterprise ever achieved. There will never again be anything on that scale of grand first reconnaissance and the engineering feats that made that possible with limits of early to mid 1970s technology still boggle my mind to this day. And just think, if Voyager 1 radio occultation of Titan failed due to something like "rain in Spain", Voyager 2 would also have been retargeted to Titan and that would have been the end of it. Fortune favors the bold, I guess.

[@PyroRob69]

I wish current spacecraft design engineers today could make that choice of using a quality 40 cent op-amp over a Chinese 4 cent op-amp swept off the floor in a discount manufacturing facility. Imagine if the Voyagers had a slightly larger RTG and how much we could have learned with being able to use the instruments once we finally got way out there.

[@1pjb1888]

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

[@yaygya]

New Horizons was launched in 2004 and is the Voyager mission's spiritual successor.

[@iskanderyesenbay4244]

God bless all of the scientists. The best achievement of mankind.

[@tintintintin232323]

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

[@Space-Audio]

I graduated in 1978 . . . And started working on the Voyager project in 1979 as an undergraduate student part-time employee processing PWS data at the University of Iowa.

[@Space-Audio]

30:44 NEC APC desktop computers, likely running CP/M, but maybe MSDOS. We had one of those at UIowa, although we were also still running MP/M on Z80 custom-built systems which submitted batch jobs to our Univac 418-III. We were just migrating to a VAX 11-780. By Neptune encounter we were replete with micro-VAX workstations.

[@alanw083]

Voice over guy same guy who reads the codex entries in Mass Effect. Nice touch!

[@kulmainer]

To all the people who made all the Voyagers possible: You will be the Heros in Future Generations, you will be the people starting Voyager long Time ago - and you will be the people as Carl Sagan said: Lets make this message into the cosmos! This all is so amazing - and in Thousands and Thousands of Years from now all of your names will still be present! Thanks for giving us hope in a vast and cosmic arena!

[@kulmainer]

Look at this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZC3YYuqlLWipa8&lc=Ugxhk2yxNawxiOFGLiJ4AaABAg.97gOqOuKy0j9I1J9wzUYhh

[@kulmainer]

All of your great Guys will be named within the next Centuries, you all have started a project called Voyager One and Two. You still have contact with the Voyagers - how can you all do this?? So far away!! Greetings Roland.

[@elijaguy]

Very inspiring! (though the "space souncs and music" in some sections is ridiculous: Space is silent.)

[@oneactionman]

What an achievement.

[@masauso100]

A great in feet in human progress

[@peppeddu]

If we had better RTGs the Voyagers could be running for hundreds of years, after all the hardware is still in pretty good shape, they've just turned most of it off because there's not enough power. I can't believe we haven't yet solved this problem.

[@Space-Audio]

Even more interesting is the fact that if we dedicated sufficient ground receiving resources, we could currently receive Voyager 1 & 2 data at full planetary-encounter-like data rates, instead of the few bits per second limit due to DSN antenna resources.

[@freshday633]

whats the original documetary called it was two vhs tapes 4 hours each

[@rkornilo]

Very much enjoyed this. One caveat - the Earth/Moon picture shown was from Galileo, not Voyager...

[@b1aflatoxin]

Yep, that photo was from Galileo! Not sure if this Nasa link will show up on youtube: but here is the actual Voyager image. www.nasa.gov/image-feature/voyager-1-takes-the-first-image-of-the-earth-moon-system-in-a-single-frame :)

[@paulwalsh2344]

Yes I wish they'd used the correct one too. Rather deceptive. Really the only minor thing that detracts from an otherwise fantastic video.

[@fayetodd6511]

Paul Walsh k

[@blackpanda7612]

Cant fathom how far away it is right now. Heard somewhere its 21.5 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune. That's effing crazy

[@prasantanag7275]

Everything is still alright for 43 years old Voyager Mission beyond our universe but at the time I am very sad if Carl Sagan is alive and part of this discussion!

[@stonerlemonblues]

The first image of the Earth-Moon system was actually made by Mariner 10.

[@AllAboutYouTubers13]

*My Picards* 😎🙏♥️

[@germaindufour8365]

the biggest thing I got from all that episode is the family picture taken by voyger 1 of yhe planette and be able to see a small earth is. So it is almost inemagiable that an other life could find us in the universe.

[@karenlooper8309]

I agree!

[@InquisitorMatthewAshcraft]

ONE problem... Carl Sagan was the person who developed the "Golden Record". Get it right, please.

[@LarS1963]

Which was what they said.

[@InquisitorMatthewAshcraft]

LarS1963 ok. Just an issue of how they phrased it is all. N/P

[@kingpropane705]

Anyone else notice that Ed Stone looks like the guy from Toy Story that repairs Woody / old guy who plays chess with himself in a Pixar short?

[@Larrythebassman]

BadaBing 🔥🚀

[@yuikijr4418]

I feel so sad everytime i watch this. -_-

[@jaycoboliveri809]

Music at the end... what is it?

[@ugowar]

Expanding Time And Space - Daniel Jay Nielsen

[@jaycoboliveri809]

Thank you very much sir/miss!

[@jairkerker2821]

Nothing makes me feel what I feel watching the film footage of those planets close by. It is like seeing something forbidden, being in a place you can't possibly be. Especially the footage of approaching Neptune is very dear to me. Too bad there's so little film (or none) of those approaches shown in this documentary. -edit- There is no film footage but pictures of coarse. The BBC had a documentary about the gas giants and they made little clips of the photo's..

[@kevw172]

5:06 are the pioneer spacecrafts forgotten at this point?

[@Space-Audio]

He was talking about Voyager planning which occurred prior to the Pioneer 10 Jupiter encounter.

[@Emdee5632]

In fact the two Voyagers are a kind of Pioneer spacecraft. Pioneer 10 only visited Jupiter but its instruments were just not at the same level as the later Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft... Pioneer 11 visited Jupiter and Saturn. Contact with P10 was lost in 2003, communication with P11 was stopped in 1995.

[@alexsiemers7898]

Definitely a bit late on this, considering it's your own spacecraft!

[@NASAJPL]

Good point. The program was held at JPL in late August at the time of the launch anniversaries, and we decided it should be made available for everyone to watch.

[@Fuelthejet]

Old video released at the right time perhaps 🙂

[@wordzfailmebro]

THERE ARE NO DJ'S IN SPACE. 👽

[@JohnJones-qt3pe]

Hello. My. Friends. This. Is. John p. Jones. From. Las. Vegas. Nv. 46. Y. 0

[@kittyparty6925]

Share..

[@Fuelthejet]

This is epic. But I sometimes think did they actually send something in space? Wonder how they dealt with van Allen belt. Nonetheless great achievement for the mankind

[@alexsiemers7898]

The belts aren't an issue for older spacecraft. The big issue with the belts today is that modern electronics can be corrupted by the radiation, and the shielding needed isn't that much anyway, considering the brief exposure time.

[@cleekmaker00]

Look for the Photo of Voyager 1's Radio Signal.

[@jimbob1427]

They sent the pioneer satalites first to check the radiation levels. Once they found out the radiation level was a lot higher then they expected NASA had to redesign voyager to make it less complicated to deal with the radiation . If it wasn't for the pioneer satalites voyager would have failed at Jupiter .

[@TheChico868]

When will you guys launch a new interstellar Probe.? We have better technology now.

[@sarthak_chauhan1010]

11:18

[@kulmainer]

How can you still give commands to the Voyagers so far away. I guess they are about to leave our Solar System!

[@colmocallaghan6626]

As of now in year 2022 the Voyagers have completely departed our Solar System and are now traveling through interstellar space, Voyager 1 is 18 light hours away, it takes near 1 day to send a signal and it will take longer and weaker as it speeds away through our galaxy, provided it doesn't crash into something the Voyagers will survive for hundreds of years, them light hours will become light years and travel forever, in 2 million years will depart our galaxy, what an amazing journey.

[@kulmainer]

@@colmocallaghan6626, thanks Sir! I think for all of us its so hard to understand. The amazing thing is you are talking about "Light Hours" . But I guess thats the truth - its only "Light Hours" and not Light Years! So what are we, what is Planet Earth? President Carter put a message to Voyager, would be interesting what they think about us when in some Million Years they catch Voyager? Maybe they say: People of Planeth Earth were a intelligent species, but it was a species who liked wars and didn´t care about each other, so they destroyed each other - its so sad to read this message!

[@fabiangong4356]

Come up with a Solution to Nuclear waste..besides dumping or burying it..and surely not burn it..Ship it all out to Space..

[@materialdefender3599]

Vorager

[@talhadeniz8465]

Uzay sondası. Şerefsizim aklıma geldiydi...

[@GodsServant77]

Sad you FORGOT MY DAD RAYMOND LEROY HEACOCK? The one who set the course and wouldnt budge at the cost of his job??? If my Father hadnt set that course...Voyager would not STILL BE GOING?! MY DAD CANT STAND UP SINCE HE PASSED AWAY A FEW MONTHS BEFORE YOU RELEASED THIS APPARENTLY...SHAMEFULL...I DIDNT SEE ANY OF YOU WIN THE JAMES WATT MEDAL? Wow...how bad you ripped my Dad off for all his hard work.

[@Emdee5632]

Heacock was part of JPL and worked on several space programs. There are so many other people who had the same career and are also unknown to the greater public.

[@billysmith5721]

do u believe in god

[@kurtismcintyre7702]

Hahahaha what a joke

[@whirledpeas3477]

Need attention 😪? Get a cat 🐈

[@bingewatch_reallygraceful635]

Lies. Expensive LIE$....NA$A

[@thatgaming1940]

You're not really that graceful aren't you?

[@wadeadams2775]

Looking for life while life here is dying..real smart.

[@drjimlewisnc]

Very misleading clickbait. Nothing shocking revealed.