NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will celebrate 40 years of the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft — humanity's farthest and longest-lived mission — with a public event at 12:30 p.m., EDT, Tuesday, September 5.
This artistic rendition depicts NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft entering interstellar space, or the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago. The environment inside our solar bubble is dominated by the plasma exhausted by our sun, known as the solar wind.
The interstellar plasma is shown with an orange glow similar to the color seen in visible-light images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope that show stars in the Orion nebula traveling through interstellar space.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The observance will take place at the Smithsonian’s museum located at Independence Avenue at 6th street SW in Washington, DC. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website. Activities will include panel discussions about the Voyagers’ creation and mission history, their unprecedented science findings and imagery, impact on Earth’s culture and how the spacecraft inspired countless scientists, engineers and the next generation of explorers. The event also will include a galactic message transmitted toward the Voyager 1 spacecraft by a celebrity guest.
The Voyagers’ original mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Although the twin spacecraft are now far beyond the planets in the solar system, NASA continues to communicate with them daily as they explore the frontier where interstellar space begins.
Participants in this event include…
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist, Caltech, Pasadena, California
- Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena
- Gary Flandro, Voyager Mission Grand Tour creator, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
- Alan Cummings, Voyager researcher, Caltech
- Ann Druyan, writer/producer, Golden Record Visionary
- Morgan Cable, researcher, JPL
- Eric Zirnstein, researcher, Princeton University, New Jersey
- Matthew Shindell, curator, National Air and Space Museum
In celebration of Voyagers' Interstellar voyage, NASA is offering posters and infographics for readers to download, print, and share.
The public also can ask questions on social media using #AskNASA
Commemorative posters for the mission, celebrating the Voyagers' launches and journeys, are available at: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/downloads/
For more information on Voyager, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/voyager and https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov
