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Video: Voyager at 40 with Randy Attwood

Submitted by rasc@johnginder.com on 16 January 2018

The two Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977, over 40 years ago. Over a period of 12 years, they explored the four outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Their discoveries changed our understanding of our solar system.

This talk looks at the mission and its discoveries as well as some of the challenges Voyager engineers faced in taking late 1960's spacecraft technology, which lasted only a couple years in space, and extending its lifetime to the required 12 years to complete the mission and beyond. Now the two spacecrafts are leaving the solar system and providing information on the heliopause - the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space.