Thirty-Five Years

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched roughly thirty-five years ago. They're still working.

Unlike some who are writing about the anniversary, by the time the Voyagers launched I was old enough that space exploration had become a norm for me -- I was an adult when Neil Armstrong made the first moon walk. It was still exciting, though. And the pictures they sent back! (The space program has been part of my life since childhood -- I remember my father taking me out into the back yard about 4 am one morning to see Sputnik. I was in sixth grade. Now it seems sometimes as though half the stars you see at night are actually satellites.)

Here's a close-up of Ganymede by Voyager 1:

And the clouds on Jupiter look like an artist's rendering, but this is actually a photograph:

We didn't know until Voyager got there that Jupiter had rings; they're very faint, and pretty unstable. Saturn, on the other hand:

And now Voyager 1 is getting ready to leave home, so to speak -- it's headed out of the solar system, into interstellar space.

That's exciting.