Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Voyager Mission: A 45th Anniversary Celebration

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Join us at the Jet Propulsion Lab for the celebration of the two Voyager spacecrafts’ 45-year journey across the solar system and beyond. Stick around for a stimulating conversation with Ann Druyan, creative director for the Golden Record carried by the probes. The Voyager theme continues in this week’s What’s Up space trivia contest. There’s more to discover at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-voyager-45th-anniversary-ann-druyanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A party for Voyager's 45th, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Join me at the Jet Propulsion Lab for a celebration of what is almost certainly the most popular planetary science mission of all time. And stick around for another very special conversation with the person who served as creative director for the Voyager Golden Record, the great Andrewian. We'll wrap up today's bonus-length episode with What's Up and the very cool Voyager prizes Bruce Betts and I will make available to the winner of a new space trivia contest. As this episode of our show is published, I may or may not still be on Florida's space coast. It all depends on whether that mighty new rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, launched during its first two-hour window on the morning of August 29th. I sure hope so, but I'm producing this show a couple of days before the 29th so that I can jump on a plane to the Kennedy Space Center.

A very knowledgeable former NASA friend gives the Artemis I mission a 40% chance of liftoff during the first opportunity, which sounds about right. I'll stick around for the second attempt on Friday, September 2nd, if needed. Check out the August 26th edition of The Downlink, the Planetary Society's free weekly newsletter for links to our great coverage. Speaking of getting the first woman and the next man to the moon, as NASA likes to say, the U.S. Space Agency has selected 13 possible landing sites for Artemis III. All are in the south polar region of our trusty natural satellite, the region with those permanently shadowed areas with lots of water ice.

The final decision is still many months away. water ice. The final decision is still many months away. Many of you have probably seen the jaw-dropping new infrared images of Jupiter delivered by the JWST. If not, you can check them out at planetary.org. I was not surprised to read the JWST scientists are surprised and thrilled by the performance of their new space telescope. There's more to this story, and it includes the work of citizen scientist and image processor extraordinaire Judy Schmidt. Judy will join us here on Planetary Radio soon. Voyager 2 lifted off from Florida on August 20, 1977. Its sister craft, Voyager 1, followed on September 5. Scientists and engineers

hoped they'd last at least five years. They've now been exploring and reporting their findings for nine times that span. Both are now deemed to have reached interstellar space, where most of the influence of our star ends and the forces of the vast Milky Way galaxy take over. Ahead is the Oort cloud of comets that reach halfway to the next nearest star. The Voyagers are unlikely to still be alive by then, but they will go on across the void for perhaps billions of years. Each carries greetings, messages of hope, pictures and sounds from across our life-filled planet, and the best playlist ever created, in my humble opinion. And all this

is after they revealed the worlds of our outer solar system as never before, teaching us again that our neighborhood is full of surprises. It was several months ago that I first heard from Linda Spilker and Suzanne Dodd about their plans for a party. I'm so glad to have been invited. Linda has returned as Deputy Project Scientist for Voyager, even as she continues as Project Scientist for Cassini. And Suzanne is the latest in a distinguished roster of project managers on the Voyager mission. Their party took place in the Jet Propulsion Lab's von Karman Auditorium, right where people have gathered over and over to hear the announcements of Voyager's discoveries for 45 years. Linda and Suzanne took turns as on-stage emcees, welcoming current lab staff, interns born well after the Neptune encounter,

media folks like me, and with great honor, members of the mission team who go back a half century. None were as honored or celebrated as Ed Stone, the only project scientist Voyager has ever had. Ed's health prevented him from presenting, but he enjoyed being greeted by hundreds of attendees, young and old. Here's part of Suzanne's tribute from the von Karman stage. Ed's been on the project for 50 years as a project scientist, and that

almost deserves, I think, a standing ovation. So, Ed, thank you so much. Many of you remember that we talked with new JPL director Lori Leshin on our July 27 episode. Lori took the stage to add her kudos for Voyager and its team. Huge congratulations to this team. So many of you who have been with this project over many years and all of us who stand in awe of it are thrilled to be here to celebrate you and that incredible, those two incredible spacecraft today. So I'm thrilled to have two of my predecessors here whose shoulders I stand on, and this lab would not be where it is today without them, Ed and Charles. So thank you to you both. Yes. But really this whole field, our whole discipline of planetary scientists, of which I count myself as one, would not be here without this mission. I think Voyager and Viking really are the foundation upon which all of modern planetary science has been built.

And yes, there are other missions we can argue about, whether the earlier mariners and the flybys should get that credit, and they probably should get some. the earlier Mariners and the flybys should get that credit, and they probably should get some. But those two missions, and especially Voyager, as we look to the outer solar system now, really becoming front and center in so many of our future plans to explore. It's all about the foundation that Voyager laid. 45 years is an extraordinary accomplishment, but the foundation it laid and the legacy it leaves will live forever. This mission will go on forever because it will always be leading to that next level of exploration. And I've been talking a lot these days, people at headquarters are probably getting tired of me talking to them about the fact that I think we need to be thinking

much more strategically about exploration of the outer solar system more collectively, how to get there more frequently than once in a generation, how to make sure it's accessible because of the worlds, the worlds that Voyager revealed to us are so extraordinarily interesting that we just have a very long to-do list in the outer solar system. And so I'm so grateful to get to be here at a moment when we are really working to build upon the extraordinary legacy of Voyager. I just hope that you all

know that the legacy that you have set is is safe with us and we are really truly committed to carrying forward and building upon this inspirational mission that you have given us. And not just with what follows on to it, but with these missions themselves. They're still going, right? It's like 50 years. Let's go. We're already planning. So yeah, the party. We're already planning the party for the 50 years. As Carl said, someday humanity will venture beyond the solar system, will venture to the stars, and we won't be the first ones there. This craft is the first one. There can only ever be one first, and that really is you. So I'm just incredibly inspired to be able to just be in the same room with so many of you who have carried

this mission forward and especially add to you thank you for the science and for the incredible discoveries and for 50 years of commitment because you've been at it for 50 years with this mission we will um we will carry that legacy forward we were also treated to the outstanding sixth episode of a documentary series by JPL's Blaine Baggett about the history of the lab. The footsteps of Voyager featured the encounters with Uranus and Neptune and took us into the Voyager interstellar mission that continues today. You'll hear excerpts from it during my conversation with Andrew in a few minutes, and we have a link on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio. The party continued long after the formal program ended with the full-size mock-up of a Voyager spacecraft as the backdrop. I ran into Linda Morabito. Linda, delighted to run into a former Planetary Society colleague, a treasured colleague.

But also, you know, we just watched this second episode, The Encounters of Voyager with Uranus and Neptune and beyond. You must have been in the first episode because of your discovery. Remind us. Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was working on the Voyager navigation mission. A completely successful encounter. One of the most exciting times of our lives to see Jupiter up close, its moons.

It was an amazing time. And to be responsible for, no pressure, but the successful navigation, the whole team that I was on, of the Voyagers to Jupiter. And it was a very, very thrilling, wonderful time. But after all the excitement had subsided on March 9th of 1979, after the March 5th encounter, I was looking at the post-encounter planet pictures that had been taken for satellite ephemeris development, which of course was refining the orbits of these moons that we had seen only previously from a great distance. And in doing that, in processing a picture, I was able to see something that it turns out no one had seen before.

And that was what now, Iowa is so justifiably famous for, the very first of its volcanoes that you picked out of an image. Absolutely. It looked almost like another moon peeking out from behind Io, and we really had to use the scientific method to consider every possibility of what that crescent was, her every possibility of what that crescent was, anomalous crescent, and it was in fact rising about 170 kilometers over the surface of Io, a volcanic plume, and just by the phase angle, the lighting, we were able to see simply a crescent of it. One of the most thrilling moments of my life and I cannot even imagine how any scientist could have any more wonderful thing happen to them than those first moments of seeing that. Outstanding moment in the history of the

45-year history of this mission if you don't count what happened before launch but also representative of so many other great discoveries. Incredible. You've got four giant worlds and we rewrote the textbooks. The Voyager scientists, the engineers took us to these worlds and showed us that they are alive, that their moons represent phenomenon that we could never even have dreamed about or imagined one discovery after the next. One incredible mission now representing all of humanity in interstellar space. 50 years at JPL? Yeah, 50 years. Congratulations. It's wonderful to see you.

Thank you. What a pleasure. Thanks so much. And join the party with big smiles on their faces were at least two JPL interns. I'm Marianne Benny Fernandez, and I study at Stanford University. I'm Abby, and I study at the University of Cambridge, and I'm an intern here at JPL. How is it, did you just find out about this little celebration and decided to come by? There was an email a week ago, and I thought I'd pop by. I didn't expect it to be as amazing as it was. Yeah, I just could not believe. I was not sure if I would be able to

come in because I was a little late. But then when I came in, I was totally stunned to see the audience and to see the people who actually worked on Voyager sitting over here in the same room where I was sitting. I was totally stunned. So let me make a wild guess. I bet neither one of you was born when Voyager did most of the work that it's famous for. Of course, it's still doing that work. Am I right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, so I grew up seeing the pictures that Voyager put out,

and it was kind of mind-blowing to know that the people who made those pictures are sitting in the same room as me, talking to me as well. Did those pictures, did that data, and just the mission itself, did it, do you think, have some influence over your decision to go in the direction that you've gone? I mean, the reason you're interns here now. Yes, it did have a lot of influence on me

because I think that's how it started with me wanting to always work for NASA someday. I'm an international student. I came to the US to study aerospace, but I never knew the trajectory to turn out would be this amazing that I would one day get to work for JPL as an intern.

I am totally stunned. I am so happy with the way things have turned out for me today. Yeah, when I was little, I would always look at these pictures of Neptune and Jupiter and be so excited about even seeing pictures of Voyager as well. And that's kind of what inspired me, kind of sparked what I wanted to do. And now I'm here, and it's better than I could have ever imagined. Well, what are you doing now in your internships,

and what do you hope to be doing as you head on into your career? So at the moment I'm working on antennas, because that's actually my field of depth and area that I would like to do research on. And I'm trying to see how it can help in deep space exploration, basically. I'm currently working on uncertainty analysis for Mars sample return and future landers as well and honestly that's kind of exactly the sort of stuff I want to be doing in the future so it's perfect. Have a wonderful rest of your summer internship here at JPL and I bet you will always remember coming to this little party for Voyager. Yes definitely

I am always going to remember this. Having all four of the last four directors in the room was amazing. Best of success. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Nicola, or Nikki Fox, heads the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. We last heard from her in our January 12, 2022 show when we talked about the Parker Solar Probe. Pretty nice party. Glad you made it out. I am totally delighted to be here. It was a last minute decision, flew in last night, and I'm getting on a plane in a couple

of hours, but it totally was worth it to just be here with the team, celebrate this incredible mission, and of course celebrate the just magic that is Ed Stone, the lead scientist for this mission for 50 years. And so it was just so great to see him and just celebrate everything together. I feel exactly the same. I'm so honored that I was even able to say hello to him again today. So here's a mission that went from planetary science to your bailiwick, heliophysics. You must be pretty proud to have this as part of your portfolio. I am really proud of Voyager.

And it isn't just because, you know, it's an inspirational mission and it's, you know, all the things that we could talk about, all the firsts that they've had. But it actually opened up a new area of science for us. Taking pictures of the planets, studying all the planets, absolutely fabulous. For us, actually going out into interstellar space, leaving the environment that our sun controls and going out into that, you know, you think of it as like the cold, cold interstellar space of where that spacecraft is. And just when you think about how far away those spacecraft are, the light speed the round

trip light speed 43 hours i mean that's that's out there that's really out there did you see me talking to those two young people both jpl interns both born well after most of the big events happened in this mission and yet they say that they say that they are partly here as interns and going in the direction they are because of this mission. I can believe it. It is an inspirational mission. It's almost like a mission that reinvented itself all the time. You fly past one planetary body, you take groundbreaking firsts, and then what do you do? You go to another one, and then you go to another one,

and then you think, oh, you know what, I'll leave the solar system. I mean, it's just this inspirational mission. It just keeps giving and giving and giving. Just one more question because you mentioned it on stage, and I've been reading a little bit lately about how we might someday return to interstellar space with a dedicated mission, one really designed for that. Could you talk about that? Yes, certainly. We have a lot of really exciting mission concepts that are being discussed.

Right now, we are actually kicking off our decadal survey for heliophysics. And so, you know, what are the next things we're going to do in the next decades to come? And certainly an interstellar probe, a mission that is actually designed to go straight out of the heliosphere and study that environment out there with dedicated instruments for that is really high up on, I think, the community's priority list, along with other great missions too. But, you know, Interstellar Probe, definitely a big candidate there. Thank you, Nikki. Great to see you again and glad you could make it to the party.

Thank you so much. With the party mostly over, Suzanne Dodds and Linda Spilker joined me in the small museum next to Von Karman Auditorium. Hell of a party, you two. When did we start to talk about this? I mean, you told me months ago, right, Linda? Right. We knew the 45th anniversary was coming up several months ago, and so we started to plan an event at first, low-key, show a movie, have the Voyager family from JPL there. And suddenly it just started to blossom and bloom and inviting retirees, and the event really grew. And you had cake, which you had promised at the very beginning. Yes, we had cake, and I got to choose the flavors of the cake, so at least I had some say.

It was a great event, and it's great to have retirees come. It's great to mingle with current employees. And I think everybody that was in the room is touched by Voyager, whether they had spent two years on it, 20 years on it, or even just if they're an intern in Voyager was what got them interested in space. We were just talking about some of those old-timers, those Voyager veterans. I saw Charlie Colhaze got to say hi.

It really is wonderful to see this group come together again, and it was especially gratifying to see Ed Stone, that he was able to attend and enjoy this, even if he wasn't able to speak. It was great to have Ed here and to recognize him for his 50 years as project scientist for Voyager. And really, he's sort of the heart and soul of Voyager, keeping the scientists on track and making sure that we got out to the heliopause. That's really a credit to Ed. Suzanne, they showed the second episode in

this sort of JPL history series that your colleague Blaine Baggett has done. And this was largely, not entirely, Voyager at Uranus, Neptune, and beyond. Let me just thank you because there you were doing some kind of, you were anchoring some video coverage for one of those encounters. Thank you for not staying in my business because I don't need the competition. Yes, I don't think I was very good back then. That was probably my first experience on live television. My public speaking is better now. It was certainly enjoyable and a little nerve-wracking, but the Neptune encounter was great.

I feel like it was a highlight of my early career for sure. Is that about when you came on board, became part of the mission? I started before the Uranus encounter. So I worked on Uranus with the science team helping design their observations. And then for Neptune, I moved over to what's called the sequencing team, which is really the group of people that put together the sequences, the command strings that are going to get sent to the spacecraft. And you do your best. You do, you check it, triple check it, quadruple check it, cross your fingers. It gets sent to the spacecraft and whoa, are you like glued to your screen to see if the correct images come down and things are pointed in the right direction. And it was just very gratifying to see it all

work at Neptune. Thank goodness all those zeros and ones were in the right place. And it was just very gratifying to see it all work at Neptune. Thank goodness all those zeros and ones were in the right place. Correct. Linda, we've talked about this before, but remind me, you came into this mission much earlier. I actually came in in 1977, straight out of college, my first real job, and actually got here in time to go to the launch of Voyager 2. There was a science steering group meeting at the Cape, and they invited all of us newcomers to come with them and be part of that launch, and it was so exciting.

And I think about it, I don't think I could have imagined being here 45 years later with two working spacecraft now exploring interstellar space. It wasn't in the timeline. So what's happening? What are we continuing to discover out there in the interstellar void? Well, the discoveries are quite interesting, Matt, because it's not what we expected. We had these ideas just from looking from the inside out. And now that Voyager is actually on the outside making measurements, for instance, it seems like the magnetic field from the sun is controlling far out past the heliopause, and we haven't rotated the magnetic

field yet into the direction of the interstellar magnetic field. We can measure the actual cosmic ray density for the first time, because the heliopause is an excellent shield from those high-energy cosmic rays, that radiation. And so it shields quite a lot of them out, and now we can measure them directly. Also, there are shocks that come from the sun, propagate out into the interstellar medium, and Voyager sees these shocks in the magnetic field data, in the plasma wave data, and it's so exciting to see that interstellar space isn't boring. There's a lot to see out there. It's kind of like being in a turbulent sea in a sense and trying to sense the eddies and currents of interstellar space.

Suzanne, how are those two old-timers doing? Well, they're hanging in there. They are old-timers. You may have heard recently we had a little hiccup with Voyager 1, although it looks like we can get over that. We may need to operate the spacecraft slightly differently going forward, but that's what you do with any mission. Once you launch it, you can't go to it and fix it, right? In Voyager's case, it's a little bit of the extreme since it's 15 billion miles from us and it's 1975 technology. But we can make changes to flight software, and we can sort of work around issues that there might be with command streams and things like that. So we're really digging into the problem now, but I think we'll be able to work around it.

I've asked this question of Linda and others many times, but how much longer do we think we have? Assuming everything continues to work, but those watts continue to fall as that RTG cools off. Right. We lose four watts of power a year. And so over time, we've been turning off different subsystems, and we just finished turning off all the instrument heaters. The instruments, miraculouslyulously are still working. They're at temperatures that they weren't designed for, weren't tested for, but yet they work. And all the data that's coming back is still great data.

So again, Voyager is a really incredibly remarkable spacecraft from a longevity standpoint. But looking forward, I would say we have a stretch goal of getting out to 200 AU. As a manager, I would say we have a stretch goal of getting out to 200 AU. You know, as a manager, I say that's my stretch goal. That's where I want to get. And that's 15 more years. I definitely think there will be a 50th anniversary party and likely with two spacecraft still operating.

When we start to get to 2030, it might be a little more iffy, but every bit of data that Voyager takes now, because it's in situ, it's in interstellar space, is important. It's unique and it's important. And using in situ data with other spacecraft that are looking at the heliosphere remotely from like our Earth's orbit, you put that all together and you get a much better model of what's going on in our heliosphere remotely from like our Earth's orbit, you put that all together and you get a much better model of what's going on in our heliosphere. And still returning first. Yes, Voyager is definitely the pathfinder. And if you think about it, the two Voyagers are now our first interstellar travelers, collecting data in a place nothing has flown before and revealing new discoveries. And I'm sure there's more to come.

Thank you both. Once again, great party. So glad that I could join you. And I'll see you for the 50th. Excellent. Thank you so much. Yes, definitely. See you for the 50th.

The party's over, but the celebration continues in a minute with Andrew Yen. You'll want to stick around for this wonderful conversation. Greetings. Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. We need your help as we launch a new and exciting project. It's a new subscription-style program for kids. We call it the Planetary Academy, and it's getting underway with a Kickstarter campaign. The Planetary Academy is a special learning and membership opportunity for kids ages 5 to 9.

Young explorers will receive four adventure packs each year that have been developed by our experts. We're creating the first adventure packs right now. Academy members will learn all about our solar system through out-of-this-world activities and surprises, preparing them to blast off to exciting destinations. After this first successful year, we'll expand the Academy to a full three-year program that explorers and their families can renew annually. Will you help us kickstart the Planetary Academy by backing our project? Visit planetary.org slash academy today to learn more and get behind this exciting new opportunity. That's planetary.org slash academy. Thanks. Welcome back. Ann Druyan is the Emmy and Peabody

Award-winning creator, executive producer, writer, and director of the second and third seasons of Cosmos. She's also the founder of Cosmos Studios in Ithaca, New York. 45 years ago, she served as creative director for the Voyager Interstellar Message Project. The result was the golden records that are now headed across the cosmos. She partnered with Carl Sagan in life and in the creation of many of their best-known and most affecting books and other works, including Contact. So I had many reasons to invite her back to Planetary Radio this week. We talked online a few days ago. You'll hear clips from that terrific new JPL documentary here and there. Matt, it's always great to be with you. I look forward to our conversations.

As do I. It has never been less than both thrilling and delightful. So thank you so much, Anne. My pleasure, completely. 45 years across the solar system and beyond. 23rd, the day before we're speaking, Voyager 1 is nearly 15 billion miles from Earth, which is about 157 astronomical units, traveling at just over 38,000 miles per hour. And though it takes nearly 22 hours for its data to reach us at the speed of light, this old robot is still phoning home to tell us now about interstellar space. Could you be more thrilled? I could not be more thrilled, more proud to have had any relationship to what I consider one of the most significant missions in the history of our species. one of the most significant missions in the history of our species.

And what a great metric that is of the vastness that traveling at, let's say, I'm going to use miles, but let's say at 38,000 miles per hour for 45 years. And yet it's not even a single light day from earth does that tell you just how big the cosmos is and how how impressive at the same time two spacecraft built only 20 years after Sputnik only 20 years after a simple aluminum bowling ball was the most ambitious and exciting thing we had ever launched into the cosmos and a mere 20 years later, two interstellar craft built with the technology of the mid-1970s, and yet still teaching us so much about our neighborhood. I just can't get over the genius of the engineers, the scientists, the technicians who built the Voyagers. And of course, you know, to know that on each of them is our golden record with all of its feeling and artistry, a talent, the musical talent of the world, the imagery, the voices, the feelings. So when I think of Voyager, I just think this is that rare place

where our scientific cleverness and our artistic talent are converging in the same place to speak for us, perhaps even five billion with a B years from now, when we will not be able to speak for ourselves. How astonishing that is. And I think you know that I am just as enamored of that convergence of art and science as you are, perhaps in part because of the work that you and Carl Sagan have done that brought those seemingly disparate concepts together so beautifully. We're going to come back to the golden record, of course. But as you know,

because I just mentioned it, the day after this, I will be at JPL for this celebration of the 45th anniversary of the launch of both spacecraft. Visiting, I hope, with some of those team members, some of whom, one or two at least, were there at the very beginning. And I just wonder if maybe you have a message, a greeting for them. Oh, I absolutely do. I have more than a greeting, a hug, a very passionate greeting, admiration and solidarity with the current Voyager family and with the greats of the original Voyager family. the greats of the original Voyager family. And of course, I'm thinking of the great Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, but also Ed Stone, for whom I have such admiration,

and Suzanne Dodd, and so many wonderful people there. You know, I would stand and take off an imaginary hat to them in admiration for this stunning achievement, which not only is that convergence that we talked about of art and science, but also so benign. The idea that we can use our science and high technology for the benefit of all Earth life without hurting any of it is another aspect of Voyager that fills me with pride. Sadly, of course, Ed Stone, who has been the project scientist for Voyager, still is, since before launch, I am told will be unable to

join the celebration that takes place tomorrow. You told me that you didn't have much direct interaction with him, but you did know him, and I assume Carl worked with him more closely. Absolutely. I mean, I didn't work with Ed because my small contribution was confined to the Voyager record. But, of course, because of my great good fortune to be married to Carl, we were at every encounter, spending very often months at a time around encounter as the Voyagers made their way from world to world. times. And in more recent years, my path has crossed with Ed. What a great scientist, what a great person, and what a worthy leader of the Voyager mission Ed is. And eventually, what a great leader of the Jet Propulsion Lab itself, as he was director there for many years. You must have been exposed on a regular

basis to the enthusiasm of your husband as data was returned, particularly during those encounters with the worlds of our solar system that Voyager, the two Voyager spacecraft visited. What was that like? It was exhilarating. It was thrilling to be upstairs on one of the higher floors of one of the buildings at JPL, where the imaging team was looking at the images as they came in from the outer solar system. And to be sitting with perhaps six or a dozen space scientists, astronomers, geologists, looking at the data as it was coming in, our first close up look at so many worlds, so many moons, it was thrilling. And then to lie awake at night with Carl, pouring over these pictures, and to hear him thinking out loud of what he was seeing, analyzing it, finding new questions to ask.

Wow, it was like a dream, really. You know, the Voyagers outperformed their design specifications in every conceivable way during that phase of the mission. And they still do. That's another reason why I can't help but smile with a sense. Here's a reason for hope. Because if we can do something as difficult, challenging, and as ambitious at what the Voyagers have accomplished and continue to accomplish against all odds, even greater than the most extravagant dreams of the team members of the mission. That says something about us as a species, that we have what it takes to exceed expectations.

And of course, never, in my view, never in our history as a species have we been called upon to marshal those capabilities to save our civilization. So when I think of the voyages, I think, you know, we do have what it takes. But what is really needed is a focus for our efforts and the same kind of determination that the engineers and scientists and technicians brought to the Voyagers. You also remind me of how much we could have used Carl right now. I think you know Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the Juno mission. I mean, he, he literally grew up with Carl, visiting his parents home, and visiting with him. I think you may also know the story about that night at JPL, that Scott snuck into a room where

he knew that there would be prints because we weren't pre-digital then. Absolutely. Yeah, they were not being distributed yet. He snuck in with a flashlight. He told us this story. And there he finds Carl doing the same thing because neither one of them could wait until morning to get their hands on these images. I mean, I think that just says so much about both of these men. these images. I mean, I think that just says so much about both of these men. Yes, and I remember those nights where Carl would go to JPL with his hunger. Because remember, Carl came of age in a time where our closest view of any of the planets were, you know, earthbound telescopes. And he dreamed his whole life from,

you couldn't see when he was just a child, but he was already dreaming of opportunities such as this one to look far more closely at these other worlds. And so I, yes, I well remember, you know, Carl, I remember pouring over the Viking images, the first Viking images of Mars with Carl in 1976. Just the joy of what that was like. So yeah, that sounds like a true story. God's telling. I remember standing in Von Karman Auditorium as a scruffy college radio reporter, watching those first images come in from Viking 1 back in the summer of 76.

And Carl was right across the room. Let's talk about that golden record. You see it in that place of pride over my shoulder here in my home office, officially known as the Voyager Interstellar Message Project. How did you become the creative director for the development of that product? It was a very, actually, very extraordinary series of events and developments for that time. So it's 1977. And Carl and I have worked with our close friends and colleagues on a project for the Children's Television Workshop that was never produced. But if it had been, it would have been Cosmos for Kids, a kind of Sesame Street, had been. It would have been Cosmos for kids, a kind of Sesame Street, but really Cosmos. That was our first experience of thinking together on an actual project. And I think it

inspired Carl to approach me and Tim Ferriss and to ask us to collaborate with him on the Voyager record. Now, in 1977, you know, that was a time where I remember, in most situations, never even getting to finish a sentence, because what women had to say was so completely undervalued. And I know who was I, I was a 27 year old without really any credentials. But Carl singled me out as someone whom he thought he could work with. And so when he asked me to be the creative director of the project, that was just such an amazing development, because I knew that if I had that title on a NASA project, then my search for the sounds and the music and the various elements of the record was much more likely to be successful just because of the great prejudice against women at the time still exists. But then it was a kind of, it was accepted as the norm. Even with that title, when I would actually show up to try to get these sounds from the various sources, there were many times where I was literally kicked out of the office.

And I remember one guy saying, you're telling me that NASA sent a little girl to get my sound samples? How dare they? And so that was the norm. And so that was the norm. But Carl was magnificently free of any of the blindnesses of that time. He didn't rule anyone out. And in fact, if you look, and I think it's the cosmic connection, under chauvinisms, the only entry is carbon-based life.

Because that's who he was genuinely. And that's one of the countless reasons I am so proud of his life. He's one of the few people who you can look at all of his speeches, all of his articles, all of his books, all of his interviews, And you need not make any excuse for him. This is going back to the 1960s. Because he was so free of those sicknesses. And I think that's another reason why he's probably more beloved now than even back then. I suspect that his hunch about you back then when he gave you that job proved to be an even better choice than he realized when he made it. Thank you.

I think back also to, and you didn't have much time to do all of this. How in the world did you work through all of this content and then figure out what could actually be included on the record? I mean, now we could have included so much more because digital technology has come so far. But back then, you had a real limit, right, on what you could put on this message to the stars. Matt, you're absolutely right, as usual. Yes, we only had six months time for the entire project, very limited budget. In fact, the entire project cost NASA $18,000. Oh, my gosh. project cost NASA $18,000. And that was with Tim Ferriss and four or five other people and myself working full time on this project. You know, it wasn't that we were rich or anything like that.

I had, you know, a very, you know, sort of entry level jobs and was working to support myself. But here was a chance to confer the closest thing to immortality on the sounds and the music and the images of our beautiful planet. images of our beautiful planet. And so the idea that we could touch this message in any way, it was, you know, more than enough reward. And so we were under a lot of pressure, we didn't have any of the capabilities. I mean, now, you know, very often, I'm asked to work with people who are preparing new messages for sending beyond Earth. And I always demur because I always feel, you know, I gave it everything I had in 1977. And it's a time now for new generations to send their own messages. But if I was doing it now for the first time, I would send the whole worldwide web. I would just, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything about us. That's because, first of all, there's no point in lying. You know, no lie is so well constructed that it can live longer than, what, 20 years, 30 years, a century. They're very easily, usually they fall apart because reality has so many, so many skeins of causality that it's really, it doesn't matter matter, like what we pretend to be. So, yeah, I would just send

everything about us, because then you'd be sending the contents of all the libraries on earth, and much more. So it would be a completely different thing. I think the moment for sending that particular message was then, but I'm really gratified and delighted that so many people who are young now embrace the contents of the record. And many have said that it's the beginning of world music as a concept and a value for the United States. Because remember, in 1977, the only time we ever heard music from another country was really the odd one-hit novelty piece that people would take

to their hearts. But there was not this popular cultural search for the music of other of other cultures and in voyager that's exactly what we aspired to do was to give representation to as many of the great musical traditions of the world as we possibly could. Sagan also led the team that designed Voyager's golden record. It is a greeting card containing sights and sounds of our planet. Should one day somewhere in interstellar space, a wayfarer were to stumble upon the spacecraft and wonder who had sent it on its adventure. Just one other question for you about the record, but I wonder if at the time, does anything stand out among those pieces of art, bits of sound, images,

that you simply could not include, that you wish you could have? I mean, what was your biggest regret? Well, I had a couple. One was that NASA at the time would not let us send the image of the frontally naked couple that was very carefully thought out. The woman was pregnant, and so there were overlays and successive images of the fetus within her. And they were frontally naked, of course, and NASA was, you know, and there were members of Congress who stepped in who were like,

you want to send smut to the stars? And that to me was a very tragic indicator was a very tragic indicator of our self-hatred. You know, the idea that we hated ourselves so much that we didn't dare stand naked before the universe in this story that we were trying to tell about who we really are. I've often thought of that image and what a shame that wasn't included. A personal favorite of mine is Bob Marley. And a personal favorite among his just remarkable treasury of great music is No Woman, No Cry. And so I had this sort of personal feeling And so I had this sort of personal feeling that I wished we could have sent his music. But apart from that, I'm so proud of what we did send and the fact that we were successful in making this a non-nationalistic presentation, but something that really reflected the whole tapestry of world music. Two thoughts come to mind. One, it's a good thing it's too late to recall Pioneers 10 and 11 with their nude depictions. And two, I don't think we have to wait for E.T. to send us that message,

send more Chuck Berry. It's delightful to know that Chuck is out there among the stars as well. Yes. You know, Chuck told me that he was in a period of tremendous despair when the Voyager records were sent. And that lifted him up out of this feeling that all of the work he'd done and all of the music he'd created was possibly you know not going to be valued as highly as it should be at the end of the encounter at neptune and trident a celebration organized by carl sagan and the planetary society was held on jpl's mall

Sagan and the Planetary Society was held on JPL's mall. The evening featured a surprise appearance by rock and roll great Chuck Berry. It was a fitting choice as Berry's music was now sailing outward toward the stars aboard Voyager's golden record. That was only one of many reasons to celebrate. Yeah, and Blind Willie Johnson, who, you know, no one had ever heard of at the time, you know, aside from, you know, the connoisseurs of Delta Blues and the great music of the past. But the idea that this human being whose genius was so disregarded that he died of exposure to the rain because he didn't even have a shelter to protect him from the elements. In Dark Was the Night, as close to forever as we get. That, and the great Louis Armstrong, and the Peruvian pad pipes, and the Japanese shakuhachi, and the Japanese gamelan, and the Senegalese percussion piece, and some 25 other pieces of music will really never die.

And one woman's brain waves, right? Yes, Yeah. Well, personally, that's the thing that really gets me is to have fallen in true love with Carl Sagan during the making of this record. And then to have had my brain waves, rapid eye movement, heart sounds, every single signal that I was giving off at that time during an hour of meditation about the history of the world and the meaning of love. A mere three days after Carl and I had fallen deeply into true love,

the idea that that's on the Voyager record, my brainwaves, in a kind of joyfulness that has proven every day since to have been completely well-founded and valid, that's really meant everything. completely well-founded and valid. That's really meant everything. The essence of one human being's physical presence in the universe, I would say. You know that we love, whenever we get the opportunity at the Planetary Society and here on on this show to listen to or repeat what I am going to call the pale blue dot soliloquy. If you could take us back to that fight that Carl and you waged

to turn Voyager around when it was past Neptune and look back at our home planet. Neptune and look back at our home planet. Well, that was all Carl. That wasn't me. I, of course, I'm sure I encouraged him, but it was Carl's brilliant idea in 1981 to appreciate that when Voyager had taken its last pictures of the worlds of the outer solar system after the Neptune encounter, that Voyager 1 could now turn its cameras homeward to look at the sun and its red new planets. He started lobbying NASA in 1981, eight years before the last Voyager encounter,

saying, would they please arrange to take these last pictures of the home planet and its sibling planets. And NASA, for the first six, seven years, was completely resistant to this idea. And they would say things like, it'll fry the lenses of the camera to look towards the sun. Of course, the cameras were not going to be used ever again. Or they would say, what's the scientific value of such a picture? And Carl understood that here was the potential for the greatest teachable moment, perhaps in human history, at the time it was most urgently needed

to actually see our true circumstances, to understand the Earth as a mere pixel in the solar system, let alone the Milky Way galaxy and the universe, to take us, to wean us from our delusions of importance and centrality, but also to wean us of the delusion that this earth was infinitely plunderable and exploitable, and that we could go on ruining the environment that sustains us without ever having to be held accountable for these crimes. And so he would schlep to Washington, D.C., to NASA headquarters on numerous occasions. And when he was out at JPL pleading to have this picture taken. And it wasn't until I believe around the time of the Neptune encounter that he was first told that they had decided to do it.

And so on Valentine's Day, 1990, as imagine the beautiful Voyager 1 rising from the plane of the solar system and all the dust and looking down, looking back to the sun and its family of planets to see that even the mightiest among that was essentially a dot. It was soon after that, sitting in our living room, in the same house I'm in right now, that we stared at the pictures of the family album of the sun, he called it, each picture, and then focused particularly on the image of earth.

picture and then focus particularly on the image of Earth. And the two of us had a kind of meditation, which became the pale blue dot, the little queen, mostly Carl, but a phrase here and there, for me, anecdotally, if the input that I get every single day from all over the world requesting the rights to reproduce in one fashion or another the pale blue dot soliloquy is any indication. It hit its mark. People, it's another thing that gives me hope. I think there is a coalescing community of people on Earth who really want to see us cherish and treat each other more kindly and take care of this tiny planet.

And so that in the long term, our children, grandchildren, and theirs will be able to enjoy the beauty of this world. In 1990, Voyager 1, over 3.5 billion miles away from its home, snapped these images. This first-ever family portrait of the solar system was the idea of scientist Carl Sagan. Consider again that dot. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. For the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home We've ever known I think it will live on For a very, very long time We're nearing the end of our time together Just a couple of other questions You know, last night

I went on the Cosmos Studios website And watched the trailer For Cosmos Season 3 For the first time in maybe a couple of years. Watched the whole series, of course. I'll tell you, it's on the DVR downstairs. It pulled me right back in. It was just spellbinding. Can we hope for a continuation?

Is there hope for a fourth season? Or is there anything else you're up to? I know you told me about one thing we can't really talk about yet, but you're obviously staying very busy. I am very busy, as busy as ever. Thank you so much for what you said about Season 3 of Cosmos, Matt. That means so much to me. Yes, I have been working with Brandon Braga and Sam Sagan,

whose new series is out this week for Bill Nye. We have been collaborating on a new season of Cosmos, so let's hope that that comes to fruition. And there are actually four other projects that are in very vigorous shape, are in very vigorous shape. And I think they all have excellent chances of materializing. And so I can't really announce anything yet, but I have a lot of hope for these projects that are keeping me very busy. You know, I just feel so strongly that what we need is to awaken to the glory of nature as revealed by science.

That's what will make us act in defense of our little part of it. And science is delivering the goods. It's warned us of the dangers we face for more than 100 years. And it got those things right, which is a predictive power unrivaled like any other human enterprise. And then there's the joy of the Webb telescope and all of the great things that the scientific community is doing. And so I see as my lifelong passion, communicating the power of the scientific perspective, and doing it so painlessly that it's just becomes kind of a natural experience. So let's see. I hope I get to do a lot of these projects. Painlessly and beautifully.

I'm glad to hear that we have more to look forward to. I'm going to push my luck here in a couple of ways, both in terms of time and sort of shot in the dark with one more question. Oh, please. Thank you. Have you ever seen the movie Things to Come, the 1936 film? I sure have, yes. Okay.

It has meant a lot to me my whole life. I've been a fan my whole life. In the closing scene, the character played by Raymond Massey is watching a spacecraft carry his daughter and some other young people toward the moon. And his closing speech about why we must explore has always inspired me. And, you know, like the whole film, there are portions of that speech and the film itself that are, you know, awfully dated now. Still, when he says, I think the line is, all the universe are nothingness, which shall it be? Yes. And in fact, I think also H.G. Wells said something like the stars are nothing.

Something on that same theme, which was so prescient of the creators of that amazing film. And of H.G. Wells, who was a visionary, unparalleled. Yeah. was a visionary, unparalleled. And that sense that either we use our cleverness to learn how to take care of each other and the planet and venture forward to explore, or we turn those powers into destruction, into destruction, into a kind of internecine, suicidal civilization that does not take our species forward, does not honor the existence of the other life forms with whom we share this planet. That's the question. That is really the question. But we put all our resources question. That is really the question. Will we put all our resources into ensuring that our civilization survives and brings out the best in the people who inhabit it, or are we going to

destroy ourselves? It's been true. We've known this in one form or another for a century now. for a century now. And to me, this question seems more current, more urgent than it ever has. And yeah, I just don't want to go on too long. But I have to tell you that that film, and of course, the 1939 World's Fair, which was Carl's great moment of breakthrough at the age of five, that there was such a thing as the future and that science was the way to get to it. My own experience in the 1964 World's Fair as a kid from Queens who grew up next to it. Those were really pivotal moments in our lives. And I think with this great shadow hanging over our future right now, we all feel it. And the question is, do we have the courage to imagine the kind of future that's worthy of our children and grandchildren and to do the hard work right now to make sure that they live to enjoy it. That's the

question. Thank you for capturing so much of that optimism in Cosmos, the third season, which had to do with the World's Fair, but also in so much of the other work that you have undertaken with your colleagues and, of course, your great colleague, your life colleague, Carl Sagan. And let's hope that this work and the Voyager spacecraft continue to be in the vanguard of leading us toward that tomorrow that I think humanity is capable of.

Thank you so much, Anne. Oh, Matt, every time we have a chance to have a conversation, I always just feel so uplifted by it. Thank you so much. Anytime, anytime. I look forward to the next one. Back at you.

Times 10. We've been talking with Andrew Ian. Every human culture has rites of passage. They mark the transition from one stage of life to another. We are gathered here to celebrate Voyager's rite of passage. A machine designed, built, and operated right here at JPL has broken free of the sun's gravity, explored most of the worlds of the solar system, and is now

on its way to the great dark ocean of interstellar space. The men and women responsible are gathered here. They are heroes of human accomplishment. Their deeds will be remembered in the history books. Our remote descendants may live on some of the worlds first revealed to us by Voyager. If so, those descendants will look back upon us as we look on Christopher Columbus. Voyager reminds us of the rarity and preciousness of what our planet holds of our responsibility to preserve life on earth if we are capable of such grand long-term benign visionary high technology endeavors as Voyager can we not use our

technological gifts and long-term vision to put this planet right, to take care of one another, to cherish the earth, and bravely to venture forth in the footsteps of Voyager to the planets and the stars. Time for a Voyager special anniversary edition of What's Up. And here is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, Bruce Betts. Hey there. You're obviously a fan of that mission. Huge fan. Hard to be into planetary science and not be a huge fan of Voyager. Yeah. I was showing posters to somebody at the office yesterday,

and there were the mission posters done for us by Chop Shop. We had done the poll for them, and Voyager was chosen at that point as the people's favorite planetary science robotic mission, and I think that's still true. It's quite amazing. It's hard to argue with its longevity or the new worlds that the two spacecraft opened up to us. Yeah. So what do you want to open up to us? Old worlds that we've seen before, but it's neat to see them again. Saturn up at sunset in the east looking yellowish. We've got an hour or two later, we've got Jupiter coming up bright in the east.

A couple hours later, we got Mars in the middle of the night and coming up earlier all the time and getting brighter all the time as Earth and Mars grow closer over the next couple months. And near Mars, check out Aldebaran, which is a bright reddish star that'll be near the even much brighter these days, Mars, who is, of course, reddish. And in the pre-dawn sky, if you've got a nice clear view to the eastern horizon, you can check out Venus. Otherwise, it's going to be tough. It's going away. It's taking a sabbatical for a little bit. It's just headed off. We move on to this week in space history. Anything happen this week, Matt?

It remains to be seen as we speak, but I bet you have other stuff that already happened. It turns out, and you probably haven't discussed this, but in 1977, Voyager 1 was launched. Oh, there's that. Details. A year earlier, Viking 2 landed successfully on Mars. We move on to random space fact. I've never been a huge fan of the hypothetical disturbing facts, but

people seem to enjoy them, so here you go. Here's one for all of you. An unprotected human somehow writing on Voyager 1 during its Jupiter encounter could have received a radiation dose equal to 1,000 times the lethal level. Now, of course, they would be in a vacuum of space as soon as it launched. So, you know, it's very hypothetical. But yeah, only 1,000 times. If it were 500 times, then, you know, action heroes could make it through. But I don't think they're going to survive the 1,000 times. Plus, I think that the mini fridge on the Voyager spacecraft was eliminated for budgetary and mass reasons early on.

So you probably have nothing to keep your sandwich, your DLT cold. But there's some RTGs that'll keep them warm, some radioisotope thermal electric generators. Good thinking, good thinking. Although they're cooling off all the time. I don't know why you don't like this stuff. I love it. Hey, let's go on to what may have been the most frustrating and poorly responded to contest in the history of planetary radio. Yes.

I mean, I am so sorry. Sadly refers to a Planetary Society project, totally new kind of thing that was on a spacecraft that failed. What TPS spacecraft flight project had a penguin as part of its logo? We did great. We got at least two, maybe six entries, right? A few more than that, but not many. Most of you talked about how tough this was. Many of you said that you were making guesses. And we got some pretty interesting guesses along the way, like ICESat-2, which was not a Planetary Society project.

Michael Unger in British Columbia came up with a 1999 Betchert expedition or excursion to Antarctica. Betchert, of course, being the travel company that the Planetary Society partners with. The best entry that I got came from Joseph Caliputre in New Jersey. He said, there is no penguin. It's all in your mind. And he's right. No, no, he's not.

There was. There was a two-dimensional penguin. There was even a three-dimensional plush penguin I've heard. How about this? Mel Powell in California says it was his first pure guess in all the years he has entered the contest. Never missed me. Here's his apparently Vulcan deduction he remembered that I had said it was before my time at the Society you Bruce said it was a known TPS program and

lastly his connection of the word polar elementary my dear pal mr. Powell he came up with the Mars microphone was Was he right? Nailed it! Congratulations, Mel, but there were only two other correct answers, so I'm also going to credit John Guyton in Australia who said, tough one, give me more. I like it. And finally, our own poet laureate, Dave Fairchild in Kansas, not only got it right, but had a poem to accompany it. Here it is. Back in 1999, a contest was begun to name a bird departing for the fourth rock from the sun. It was a penguin, colored green, and headed far from home, a mascot on the logo of a Martian microphone. It was named for Admiral Bird, a southern polar guy but unlike him our penguin

launched into the earthly skies I draw a curtain over what the ending had in store but it will be sufficient that a penguin never soars oh wow too soon yeah I was involved with all the other permutations of microphones that either flew and didn't go on or didn't get accepted. Or anyway, it's a long, sad story. Fortunately, now others have followed in our wake and gotten sounds from Mars Perseverance, Perseverance rover. I'm really impressed. He not only got it right, he knew the penguin was green and named Admiral Bird. Those are correct. And I will send you a picture of the Mars microphone sticker.

So it was the first attempt to get sounds from the surface of Mars. Unfortunately, it was on board the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, which failed when trying to land in the polar regions where penguins hang out in the South Pole. Okay. All right. Well, Dave Fairchild, believe it or not, Random.org, didn't have a whole lot to choose from, but it did choose you. So we're going to send you that copy of the Spacefarers Handbook, Science and Life Beyond

Earth by Brigitte and Urs Gans. It's a really fun book to read. And Mel and John Guyton, we'll come up with something for the two of you as well. I don't know, maybe a nice little rubber asteroid or two. How's that? It's nice of you. Good job. And nice job, everyone.

And sorry to torture you. We talk about Mars microphones, including this one on our site, but somehow over the years, Admiral Byrd has faded away. I have really been looking forward to this next contest because it is Voyager focused, at least in terms of prize. I haven't heard the question yet. What have you got for us? All right. I went through many permutations, but I decided to do something that looks at the length of time the Voyagers have been successfully flying. They're still working.

Here's your question. How many JPL directors have there been since the Voyagers launched? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You need to get us this one by the 7th. That'll be Wednesday, September 7th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And here are the great prizes, plural. Oh, yeah, I know. Voyager, photographs from humanity's greatest journey.

It is a brand new coffee table book. Just looks absolutely gorgeous. It's from Jens Besmer. He's the author. One of the two authors, Joel Nader as well. It's from Jen's besmer he's the author one of the two authors Joel mater as well it's from tanoia's publishing and uh it's already on Amazon it's brand new you can probably find it I'm sure other places as well but wait there's more no way back during the Neptune encounter of 1989 August 1989 the planetary Society had some medallions made. On

one side, it says the Planetary Society salutes the men and women of Voyager. And there were 5,000 of these medallions made. I'm holding number 3,618. On the back is the design that decorates the cover for the Voyager Golden Record on both spacecraft, which I have right behind me here in my office as well. We have one of those at least that we can send out to the winner of the book, the Voyager book. Get those entries in, everybody, by the 7th. I'd like to make one little clarification, because maybe people won't get mad at me. Include acting directors. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about what you were doing 45 years ago, and whether you're still working. Thank you, and good night. Just barely. I think I'm due to go in for the

shop for a tune-up, just like the Voyager spacecraft. But Bruce, of course, is the chief scientist, and he's in great shape right here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its Voyaging members. Become part of our journey at planetary.org slash join. Arco Verde and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.