What 40 Years in Space Can Teach Us

Guest: Fran Bagenal, PhD, Professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder The man-made object that has travelled farthest into space launched from Cape Canaveral on September 5, 1977. Voyager 1 and its companion craft Voyager 2 had a pretty straight forward initial mission – explore Jupiter and Saturn. They accomplished that within five years. And since then, it’s been a giant bonus bag of space insight. Remarkably, these two spacecraft are still communicating with Earth. Even though they’re 10 billion miles away and were built back when computers filled an entire room and phones were connected to actual wires.