On this day in 1977, Voyager 1 launched.

September 5, 2023 11:35 AM

Space.com looks back on the historic launch Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space in 2012. The spacecraft’s next big encounter will take place in about 40,000 years, when it will fly by another star system.

NASA page for Voyager 1

The Golden Record

CNN: How the Voyager probes keep going and going decades after launch

No word yet, if Voyager has found the Creator.

posted by zooropa (33 comments total)

"…On its journey back, it amassed so much knowledge, it achieved consciousness itself. It became a living thing."
– James T. Kirk, 2270s (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
posted by Fizz at 12:10 PM on September 5, 2023 [8 favorites]

I remember being very taken with V’Ger when I first watched Star Trek: the Motion Picture as a teenager in the early 1990s, having discovered TNG then devoured every else Trek-related. But it was the role of the Golden Record in the opening to the second season of the X-Files that really captured my imagination. The thought of the sounds and music of Earth being discovered far in the future by some unknown civilisation still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
posted by greycap at 12:25 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

I just had to look it up; apparently V'Ger was "Voyager 6 " : )
posted by bitterkitten at 12:38 PM on September 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Voyager 1 may sound like it was first but it was a couple weeks after the launch of Voyager 2 which was probably the Best Timed Shot in TV History.
posted by Rash at 12:54 PM on September 5, 2023 [18 favorites]

I found the idea of Voyager and the golden record so hopeful and inspiring as a kid but when my son first read about it his immediate reaction was "terrible idea! Aliens will find out earth is nice and come bother us!!"
posted by potrzebie at 1:03 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Wow, they nailed that timing. Unbelievable!
posted by Windopaene at 1:45 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

potrzebie that is the whole point of the Chinese "climate change" hoax!! to make this lovely planet seem undesirable, since we have past the point of the Dark Forest option.
posted by supermedusa at 1:56 PM on September 5, 2023

potrzebie that's also the plot of L.Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth, the aliens being the Psychlos, the main one played by John Travolta, in the film (acknowledged as one of the worst ever; but the book's not bad. Or maybe it is but it's good trash.)
posted by Rash at 1:57 PM on September 5, 2023

The two Voyagers are such triumphs of vision and engineering. Really astonishing.
posted by doctornemo at 2:01 PM on September 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

This crucial image from Voyager 1.
posted by doctornemo at 2:02 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

"We will leave this place an empty stone, Or that shining ball of blue, we can call our home"
posted by Windopaene at 2:19 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

In all likelihood, Voyager 1 will outlive Earth by a trillion years. That is both awe inspiring and humbling.
posted by zooropa at 2:19 PM on September 5, 2023 [10 favorites]

Voyager 1 may sound like it was first but it was a couple weeks after the launch of Voyager 2 which was probably the Best Timed Shot in TV History.

James Burke is a wizard who can launch rockets with his mind.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:21 PM on September 5, 2023 [8 favorites]

I just had to look it up; apparently V'Ger was "Voyager 6 " : )

I... didn't have to look it up. I've wasted my life.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:28 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

In all likelihood, Voyager 1 will outlive Earth by a trillion years. That is both awe inspiring and humbling.

I did not expect a discussion of comparative religious approaches to immortality in Industrial Equipment News.
posted by clawsoon at 3:36 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

More on the trillions-of-years calculation:

Depending on their luck with this dust, the Voyagers may be able to ride out trillions of trillions of trillions of years, long enough to cruise through a truly alien cosmos, Oberg said.

"Such a distant time is far beyond the point where stars have exhausted their fuel and star formation has ceased in its entirety in the universe," he said. "The Voyagers will be drifting through what would be, to us, a completely unrecognizable galaxy, free of so-called main-sequence stars, populated almost exclusively by black holes and stellar remnants such as a white dwarfs and neutron stars."

posted by clawsoon at 3:43 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

I saw the beautiful, sweetly personal short film Voyagers at the Disposable Film Fest a decade ago and got acquainted with the love story behind the Golden Record in a really special way.
posted by obsoletefuture at 4:17 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

On that golden record was Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground. About which I posted a long time ago.
posted by y2karl at 4:18 PM on September 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

I didn't realize we were still getting data back from the Voyageurs. I thought they were just sort of drifting out there like messages in a very expensive bottle.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:30 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Of course it was in the late 70's. At no other time in human history would we send a message to an alien civilization containing nudes and directions back to our house.
posted by ocschwar at 4:38 PM on September 5, 2023 [16 favorites]

Definitely one of the good things humanity has managed to do in our short time on this planet.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:40 PM on September 5, 2023

At no other time in human history would we send a message to an alien civilization containing nudes and directions back to our house.

I dunno, have you been reading the Burning Man thread? Seems plausible even now.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:43 PM on September 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn't realize we were still getting data back from the Voyageurs.

(Funny how including that extra 'u' triggers my Canadian memory of this NFB vignette)

More to the point, the fact that the whole mission got off the ground at all is still amazing given the cuts to the American space exploration budget (not that the rest of us were going to do it either) after the U.S. 'won' the space race with the Apollo 11 landing. Almost immediately the priority shifted to the shuttle program and getting things into low-Earth orbit. So kudos to the scientists who kept fighting for the Grand Tour (which became Voyager), since an alignment that allowed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune to be visited all in one go would not be seen again for almost two centuries.
posted by hangashore at 4:53 PM on September 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

Space...

After reading so much sci-fi, and Star Wars, and everything. At 60 years old, I have come to the realization I will never got to space. Which is a bummer. Feel like the (apologies) Heinlien short stories about D. Harriman, who funds a trip to the moon, only to be told as the CEO, he can't go, for corporate reasons.

Our Universe holds all that we can ever know. And it is vaster than we can ever know. And it is just so beautiful and amazing and humbling.
posted by Windopaene at 5:18 PM on September 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

Space tourism!
NASA commissioned a series of future space tourist posters. Inspired by the WPA national park posters.

Including the return of the Grand Tour, once every 175 years, counting from the Voyager launches.

(The real purpose was to highlight planetary discoveries, both locally and around other stars.)
posted by jjj606 at 6:59 PM on September 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

How to Decode the Images on the Voyager Golden Record

For me the magic of the Golden Record is watching this and imagining that, maybe one day, we will get a similar artifact from space just like it and we're viewing the images from it for the first time.

It's no coincidence that the first 1/3 of Sagan's Contact (book or movie, you pick) is this exact thing.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:58 PM on September 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

My second favourite thing in space. (Voyager 2 is my favourite.)
posted by easternblot at 4:27 AM on September 6, 2023

There is an excellent documentary out there about the Voyager program that I can't seem to put my finger on this morning. Among other things they interview a number of the now quite senior program scientists, many of whom are still on the job since they actually know how it still works. Wonderful people!

And one says, they did all this with less computing power than what you have in your pocket today....and I don't mean your phone, I mean your CAR KEYS.
posted by hearthpig at 5:25 AM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

There is an excellent documentary out there about the Voyager program that I can't seem to put my finger on this morning.

Would it happen to be The Farthest?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:32 AM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I remember being very taken with V’Ger when I first watched Star Trek: the Motion Picture

So was my father.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:45 AM on September 6, 2023

Jacquilynne, you may be thinking of Pioneers 10 and 11
posted by foonly at 11:05 AM on September 6, 2023

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
posted by hydropsyche at 3:25 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Would it happen to be The Farthest?

YES. Your link doesn't work for me in Federated Canuckistan but here's a youtube preview for anyone else in the same boat.

ETA: justwatch says, but i have not verified, that in canada it's on hoopla if you can access that through your library network. it is not legally streaming here at the moment. (grar)

Folks, this is a wonderful doc and you should absolutely watch it.
posted by hearthpig at 3:27 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]