2022 marks the 45th anniversary of the Voyager probe launches. Launched into space in 1977, these twin probes explored the farthest reaches of the Solar System before venturing on a one-way journey beyond, all the while testing the bounds of science, robotic exploration and our collective imagination. This heavily revised commemorative book takes a comprehensive look at their incredible achievements, future potential and overall legacy. Chronicled herein is an epic journey to unveil the mysterious outer reaches of the Solar System for the first time. The book recounts the Voyagers’ travels through the asteroid belt and past the giant gaseous planets Jupiter and Saturn, as well as Voyager 2’s forays near the distant ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Each chapter details in full the game-changing scientific data and glorious imagery they sent back to Earth. This new edition incorporates all the new data we have learned in the nearly 20 years since its original publication, discussing how the knowledge first gleaned with Voyager has been built upon in subsequent decades by Cassini, Juno and New Horizons. The Voyager probes captured imaginations around the world; now is an opportune time to reflect on their unparalleled quest across the edges of the Solar System and the enigmatic interstellar medium beyond.

The story of the men and women who drove the Voyager spacecraft mission— told by a scientist who was there from the beginning. --Publisher

For the first time, in one volume, Ben Evans with David Harland will not only tell the story of the hugely successful Voyager missions, but also that of the men and women who have devoted their entire working lives to them. Illustrated with stunning images, some in color, they describe the missions from their conception, through their spectacular encounters with the outer planets and on to their ultimate and, as yet, unknown destination among the stars in the so-called Voyager Interstellar Mission

In 1977, two extraodinary spacecraft called Voyager were launched to the stars. Affixed to each Voyager craft was a gold-coated copped phonograph record as a message to possible extra-terrestrial civilizations that might encounter the spacecraft in some distant space and time. Each record contained 118 photographs of our planet; almost 90 minutes of the world's greatest music; an evolutionary audio essay on "The Sounds of Earth"; and greetings in almost sixty human languages (and one whale language). This book is an account, written by those chiefly responsible for the contents of the Voyager Record, of why they did it, how they selected the repertoire, and precisely what the record contains.

'Bursts with gloriously geeky detail.' The Telegraph Have you ever made someone you love a mix-tape? Forty years ago, a group of scientists, artists and writers gathered in a house in Ithaca, New York to work on the most important compilation ever conceived. It wasn't from one person to another, it was from Earth to the Cosmos. In 1977 NASA sent Voyager 1 and 2 on a Grand Tour of the outer planets. During the design phase of the Voyager mission, it was realised that this pair of plucky probes would eventually leave our solar system to drift forever in the unimaginable void of interstellar space. With this gloomy-sounding outcome in mind, NASA decided to do something optimistic. They commissioned astronomer Carl Sagan to create a message to be fixed to the side of Voyager 1 and 2 – a plaque, a calling card, a handshake to any passing alien that might one day chance upon them. The result was the Voyager Golden Record, a genre-hopping multi-media metal LP. A 90-minute playlist of music from across the globe, a sound essay of life on Earth, spoken greetings in multiple languages and more than 100 photographs and diagrams, all painstakingly chosen by Sagan and his team to create an aliens' guide to Earthlings. The record included music by J.S. Bach and Chuck Berry, a message of peace from US president Jimmy Carter, facts, figures and dimensions, all encased in a golden box. The Vinyl Frontier tells the story of NASA's interstellar mix-tape, from first phone call to final launch, when Voyager 1 and 2 left our planet bearing their hopeful message from the Summer of '77 to a distant future.

This is a completely updated and revised version of a monograph published in 2002 by the NASA History Office under the original title Deep Space Chronicle: A Chronology of Deep Space and Planetary Probes, 1958-2000. This new edition not only adds all events in robotic deep space exploration after 2000 and up to the end of 2016, but it also completely corrects and updates all accounts of missions from 1958 to 2000--Provided by publisher.

From September 2007 to June 2008 the Space Studies Board conducted an international public seminar series, with each monthly talk highlighting a different topic in space and Earth science. The principal lectures from the series are compiled in Forging the Future of Space Science. The topics of these events covered the full spectrum of space and Earth science research, from global climate change, to the cosmic origins of life, to the exploration of the Moon and Mars, to the scientific research required to support human spaceflight. The prevailing messages throughout the seminar series as demonstrated by the lectures in this book are how much we have accomplished over the past 50 years, how profound are our discoveries, how much contributions from the space program affect our daily lives, and yet how much remains to be done. The age of discovery in space and Earth science is just beginning. Opportunities abound that will forever alter our destiny.

“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. “Takes readers far beyond Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity’s future in the stars.”—Chicago Tribune

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977. Since then they have traveled farther than any human object. Voyager 1 is now over 10 billion miles from the sun and is headed to the utmost boundary of our solar system. This book, originally published under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, tells the story of their journey through the solar system and beyond. The authors' unparalleled access to NASA archives and imagery make this authoritative work on the subject. The book includes an 8 pages of photographs and computer generated imagery and black and white photos throughout.

Called "spellbinding" (Scientific American) and "thrilling...a future classic of popular science" (PW), the up close, inside story of the greatest space exploration project of our time, New Horizons’ mission to Pluto, as shared with David Grinspoon by mission leader Alan Stern and other key players. On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond. Nothing like this has occurred in a generation—a raw exploration of new worlds unparalleled since NASA’s Voyager missions to Uranus and Neptune—and nothing quite like it is planned to happen ever again. The photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA’s website for the mission received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At a time when so many think that our most historic achievements are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only succeeded in 2015 but made history and captured the world’s imagination. How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind this amazing mission: of their decades-long commitment and persistence; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission; and of the plans for New Horizons’ next encounter, 1 billion miles past Pluto in 2019. Told from the insider’s perspective of mission leader Dr. Alan Stern and others on New Horizons, and including two stunning 16-page full-color inserts of images, Chasing New Horizons is a riveting account of scientific discovery, and of how much we humans can achieve when people focused on a dream work together toward their incredible goal.