The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission
Ratings4
Average rating4.8
15
Ratings4
Average rating4.8
The story of the men and women who drove NASA’s Voyager spacecraft mission—the farthest-flung emissaries of planet Earth—told by a scientist who was there from the beginning. Voyager 1 left our solar system in 2012; its sister craft, Voyager 2, did so in 2018. The fantastic journey began in 1977, before the first episode of Cosmos aired. The mission was planned as a grand tour beyond the moon; beyond Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; and maybe even into interstellar space. The fact that it actually happened makes this humanity’s greatest space mission. In The Interstellar Age, award-winning planetary scientist Jim Bell reveals what drove and continues to drive the members of this extraordinary team, including Ed Stone, Voyager’s chief scientist and the one-time head of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab; Charley Kohlhase, an orbital dynamics engineer who helped to design many of the critical slingshot maneuvers around planets that enabled the Voyagers to travel so far; and the geologist whose Earth-bound experience would prove of little help in interpreting the strange new landscapes revealed in the Voyagers’ astoundingly clear images of moons and planets. Speeding through space at a mind-bending eleven miles a second, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are now beyond our solar system’s planets, the first man-made objects to go interstellar. By the time Voyager passes its first star in about 40,000 years, the gold record on the spacecraft, containing various music and images including Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” will still be playable. *An ALA Notable Book of 2015*
Reviews with the most likes.
I had recently read a book about the Pioneer missions [b:The Depths of Space: The Story of the Pioneer Interplanetary Probes 334444 The Depths of Space The Story of the Pioneer Interplanetary Probes Mark Wolverton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347356513s/334444.jpg 324933] and somebody from the Adler planetarium in Chicago came to give a talk at my library. So I picked up this book on my way out.I have read a bunch of books lately about planetary science missions and this was probably the best.I'm mostly interested in the engineering of the spacecraft and there was a lot about that in here. It also spent more time on the non-imaging parts of the missions. Maybe a bit too much about the record bolted to the side of the Voyager and the “meaning” of it all.But I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to space exploration nerds.
Having lived through the Voyager missions and witnessing the encounters, I have always been fascinated by these travelers. I learned many “behind the scenes” happenings and how the missions were planned and changed over time. I would also highly recommend the documentary “The Farthest” that includes interviews the author and many of the people from the mission.
