THE FARTHEST VOYAGER IN SPACE

TANGLEDBANKSTUDIOS.ORG PBS.ORG/FARTHEST

“You can only explore the solar system for the first time once. Voyager did that.” – LARRY SODERBLOM, IMAGING SCIENCE, VOYAGER MISSION

Launched in the summer of 1977, In addition to making discoveries, TITLE THE FARTHEST— VOYAGER IN SPACE Voyager was the audacious first mission Voyager carried a Golden Record, a disk that would visit all the outermost planets. containing music and spoken greetings DURATION 1X97 from around the world. Renowned An adventure with heart and humor, astronomer Carl Sagan was a driving WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY THE FARTHEST EMER REYNOLDS is the story of Voyager force behind this message for any as told firsthand by the indelible intelligent alien who might someday PRODUCED BY JOHN MURRAY characters who made the mission happen. stumble across the spacecraft. AND CLARE STRONGE They are a small band of resourceful, PRODUCTION HHMI TANGLED ambitious, and passionate men and After the final planetary encounter, BANK STUDIOS AND CROSSING women who reached for the stars … and Sagan turned Voyager’s cameras back THE LINE FILMS succeeded. As they reckon with their toward Earth. The resulting image of our astonishing accomplishments, they take home as a pale blue dot, no bigger than YEAR 2017 the viewer on a journey both epic and a dust mote, stirred conflicting emotions intimate that will stand alongside the of humility and pride. achievements of Magellan, Columbus, Gagarin, and Armstrong. In 2012, 11 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 left our solar system, popping Nothing about the mission was easy. The out of the bubble-like magnetic field twin spacecraft defied the odds to survive surrounding our sun. It is the farthest series of perils: a fuel leak, a jammed human-made object from Earth and the camera platform, and Jupiter’s sizzling first to enter interstellar space. radiation belts, shielded by a last-minute MacGyver-like wrapping of aluminum Forty years after launch, Voyager has foil purchased at a supermarket. earned its place in the pantheon of human achievements. Billions of years With less computing power than a from now, long after our sun has flamed modern hearing aid, Voyager beamed out and burned Earth to a cinder, the back spectacular images of Jupiter, Voyagers are likely to be sailing on, they Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But their and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” moons offered features never before seen perhaps the only tangible evidence that beyond Earth: geysers, erupting volcanoes, we ever existed. and a liquid water ocean.