Originally designed as part of the Mariner Program, Voyager moved into a class of its own almost immediately.  The tiny spacecrafts, weighing roughly 1,500 lbs each, were launched in 1977 to take advantage of the positioning of the planets.  Voyager 1 and 2 both took advantage of Jupiter’s mass in assisting them on their way, receiving a relative boost of 35,700mph.  This was essential to reach Saturn.  After reaching the Saturnine system, Voyager 1 was sent off initial trajectory by massive Titan (Saturnine moon).  Scientists deliberately sent Voyager 1 close by Titan, knowing it would fling it off the Ecliptic, but the knowledge gained in learning more about Titan was deemed more important at the time.  Voyager 2 continued on the planned trajectory, receiving gravity boosts from Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

For 33 years, Voyager 1 and 2 have continued to provide scientific data to Earth.  Both have passed termination shock, and are in the heliosheath, approaching heliopause.  Neither is en route to any specific star.  Both carry the “golden record”.  On board platforms are being slowly powered down, but Voyager is expected to continue transmitting information until 2020, possibly 2025.  Following termination of power, Voyager will drift… controlled by the pull of the Milky Way itself.

Just to the end of their primary mission, the exploration of the solar system up to Neptune, Voyager has returned five trillion bits of information back to Earth.  It’s my understanding that this represents 6,000 complete Encyclopedia Brittannicas, or 1,000 bits of information to each man, woman, and child on Earth.  Voyager 1 is currently the furthest man-made object in space, and is expected to remain so.

I am encouraging everybody to get up early on Sunday morning (yeah, like that will happen) and watch Endeavour lift off to the International Space Station.  We are coming down to the end of the shuttle missions.

That’s right, there are just four scheduled missions left before the US takes a back seat in human space flight.  Oh sure a lot of people are putting a happy face on this while one is NASA (like they have a lot of choice) ,  I bet those employees who will be getting the pink slips and adding to the problems the country has going think differently.  With any luck they can get business in the private space industry.  The rest of the happy faced lot are the ones seeing dollar signs because they are sure (they think) to get money to get ahead.  That’s all well and good and everything I’d just like to see a good reliable commercial vehicle that is human certified BEFORE we decide to kill the NASA programs.  But what do I know.

This mission will be STS-130 when it leaves the pad on its 13 day mission to deliver Node 3 also known as Tranquility and the Cupola.  The Cupola is a robotic control station that can get a 360 degree view around the ISS.

The crew: Commander George Zamka, Pilot Terry Virts,  Mission Specialists are Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire.