We are reaching
the end of the mission.
Hopefully it doesn't...
get lost
because of an anomaly.
Uh, but it's, uh it is
uh, yeah, it is...
a lot of pressure.
You don't wanna
let down Voyager.
Hello?
Jeff, are you there?
Oh, yeah, yeah,
I'm here.
So, what happened?
It's been really wild.
Yeah, um, basically the, um
certain things happened,
unusual things happened
during the mag-roll
that should have not
happened.
Still, I mean, we do not know
we don't know everything.
If we can talk
a little bit later,
people here are coming
into my office
- and want to know...
- Okay.
...what's going on,
what's happening?
Have we been able to recover?
Okay,
welcome to Voyager.
Put those lights on.
Okay.
Wanna get the blinds open.
We have our library,
I'm not sure what this is
on the floor over here.
This is our kitchen area,
offices for the engineers,
and, of course,
this is Suzy's office here.
Suzy, take one.
My name is Suzanne Dodd
and I'm the Voyager
project manager
here at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
I think, um,
being here, um...
you're forgotten here.
Where we are now
is a complex called Woodbury,
which is the name
of the street it's on.
It's about a mile
from JPL, I think.
Next to McDonald's.
NASA management
doesn't really think of Voyager,
doesn't really worry
about Voyager.
It's out of sight,
out of mind kind of thing.
That wasn't always the case.
The mission of Voyager
is the search for knowledge
that will widen the horizons
of generations to come.
The whole community,
the science community,
the political community,
were really hot
to do this mission.
To help you feel
the staggering dimensions
of this mission,
it's worth recalling
how it got here.
In the late '60s,
we learned it was possible
to use the gravity
of one planet
to accelerate the spacecraft
and go to another planet.
And then somebody found out
that there's a very
unusual alignment in '77.
All four
of the giant outer planets,
Jupiter, Saturn,
and Uranus and Neptune,
would be aligned
on the same side of the sun.
That only occurs
once every 176 years,
where you can go from Jupiter
to Saturn to Uranus to Neptune.
The last time that happened
was during Thomas Jefferson's
administration.
In '77,
it happens again.
When the Space Age itself
is only 20 years old.
As soon as
people realize that,
they think we've got to send
a mission to do that.
The Voyager Spacecraft
will carry the eyes of men
farther than they've ever been
and closer to the very limits
of our solar system.
They said,
"Okay, what we're gonna do
is we're gonna have
two spacecrafts
for redundancies."
Cape Canaveral Florida
sent another
unmanned Voyager spacecraft
on its way
to Jupiter and Saturn.
That gave us
better assurance
that at least one
could finish
what's called the Grand Tour
of the giant outer planets.
What we know about Jupiter
and Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune
were all achieved
by a single mission,
flying breakneck speed
through the solar system.
Not since 1969
and man's first footsteps
on the moon
has space captured the nation's
imagination to this degree.
We are in the process
of having completed
the reconnaissance
of the solar system.
It's a fantastic
historical achievement.
The scientists
and friends are here
to celebrate the completion
of Voyager's Grand Tour.
There's a strong feeling
of elation here
as many continue
to ride the crest of a wave
that carried the mission
to a monumental success.
And after that,
pretty much everybody thought
Voyager was over.
I think we probably had about
1,200 engineers working on it.
I I I you know,
I I don't even know I
how many people are working
on Voyager right now.
Probably not more
than ten or 15.
Today we have 12 people
that fly two spacecraft.
They've dedicated
their whole career to Voyager.
It's not
that we fly by Neptune
and then everything's done.
Voyager has long legs.
As far as continuation
of the mission,
we do plan to continue
tracking Voyager
for as long as it's possible.
We move into
the interstellar mission,
which will be staffed
by a much lower staffing level.
This is the next step
of exploration for mankind.
The first to interstellar space.
We made it.
Hello?
Hello?
Hello?
Hmm.
Hello?
Hey, this is Suzy,
I'm on the line.
Hey, Suzy,
we're about to walk in,
so stand by.
Okay.
My first job
out of college was on Voyager.
Entry level position.
It was doing
what we call sequencing.
The small team
that I was on
was small, "relative small,"
it was 30 people.
And I did that
for the Uranus encounter
and then also
the Neptune encounter.
Since then,
I've done several positions.
I was working
on Spitzer and Cassini,
raising kids,
lots of stuff going on,
so I wasn't paying
much attention to Voyager
until they called me
and said,
"Would you like to be
the Voyager project manager?"
I said, "Sure,
is it still going?"
I was surprised
when I came back
as a project manager in 2010,
how many people
were still on the Voyager.
It's like I had never
20 years had never gone by.
When you
joined Voyager,
what year was that?
'73.
I was a spacecraft
team chief through mid '81.
Much later in my career,
they called me back.
The experience is different
from day to day,
but it's still
the same goal.
There's a mission
to be flown.
We need to put the instruments
through their paces,
we need to make observations,
we need to look for things
where we're not sure
what we're gonna find.
Just to get
the science back.
And that's really
the role of of these teams.
Our focus is to make sure
that we get the scientists
the data that they want.
No space driver's
ever been out this far.
Astrophysicists,
they're tickled to death
that both Voyagers
have survived
and are taking data
in interstellar space.
There's a chance
to see something new
or learn something that hasn't
been learned or observed before.
My best day is
when we have a staff meeting
and Ed Stone is there
and he's talking about
what they're seeing.
We're talking
with Dr. Edward Stone,
Voyager project scientist.
Dr. Stone is a professor
of physics at, uh, CalTech.
Doctor, um,
what are the responsibility
your responsibilities
here at JPL?
I'm Ed Stone,
I'm the chief scientist
for the mission called
the Project Scientist
for Voyager.
Dr. Ed Stone.
Ed Stone,
the Voyager project scientist,
has joined us again.
The, uh, Voyager project
scientist, Dr. Ed Stone.
The one and the only
project scientist
that Voyager has ever known.
The one and only.
Voyager was really
a pathfinder.
The fact that it lasted 42 years
and is still working
is something
we could not have imagined
back in those days.
What we're learning is
how this the wind of the sun
interacts with the wind
from the other stars nearby.
The Voyager 1 entered
interstellar space in 2012
and it was
in the northern hemisphere
of the heliosphere.
The heliosphere's a huge bubble
the sun creates around itself.
Voyager 1
was in the North.
Voyager 2
was in the South.
We were surprised
to find that,
in terms
of where the heliopause is,
it's almost as far
from the sun in the South
as it is in the North.
By measuring
the distance to the sun
at two different points,
it helps us
model this interaction
between the heliosphere
and interstellar space.
It's a very
important interaction
because the heliosphere
shields Earth.
Over 70% of what's outside
can't get in
because of this outward flow
of the wind pushing things back.
The size of the heliosphere
is really very important
in terms of the radiation
environment here on Earth.
We had no good idea
how big
the heliospheric bubble was.
That's what
the Voyager determined.
It changed our view
of the solar system.
What Voyagers have told us
are the first hints
of what's in the space
between the stars
outside the heliopause,
and the scientists there
are fundamentally
having to change their models
of of what they thought
that space was like.
To find out
what's out there,
it's just it's just amazing.
People really thirst
for that fundamental knowledge
that's being exposed, uh,
by the Voyager spacecraft.
It's about giving people
the sense of exploration
and adventure...
and hope.
And that's
very important to us.
The science return is there.
If we can keep
the spacecraft healthy,
the science takes care of itself
and will come back.
There's still
discoveries out there.
But it's
a lot more challenging now.
For Voyager 1, the one way
light-time is 20 hours.
That means the signal
coming from Voyager 1
takes over 20 hours
to get to Earth.
Moving
at the speed of light,
a zippy
186,000 miles per second.
Voyager 2 is not far behind,
it's about 17 light-hours
away from Earth.
If I come in
on a Monday morning
and I say, "Hey, Voyager.
How you doing? Good morning,"
it's gonna take me
'til Tuesday afternoon
that that I get a response
back from Voyager
that says,
"Hi, I'm doing great."
The other issue is that, um,
we're all older now
and that age, uh,
casts a sort of a shadow
over the things that we do.
Thi this ship was
launched, you know, what,
45 years ago?
Well, people don't know
the details
of what is behind it.
What are they now?
They're in their 80s and 90s.
I mean, I'm 87.
That's a real issue.
Nowadays,
when we're talking about, um,
decisions we're making
in the engineering world
on the project,
a lot of it
goes way back
to when they built
the spacecraft.
What were the specifications
on this part?
What was it tested at?
How conservative were they
when they put this number
on this piece of paper
40 years ago?
And you go back
and you try to find
those original engineers
that wrote the document
and a lot of them
are no longer alive.
I read through
these documents
that I worked on
back in the beginning,
signed by all these people
that I had worked with.
Most of those people are gone.
It may be a race between how
long we, as individuals live,
versus how long
the the spacecraft
can still communicate with us.
There's such
a knowledge base
that's in the engineer's head,
that it's critical
to have people
who are on the project
and have been
on the project a long time,
continue to work on the project
as long as possible.
You know,
Jeff Hall, Sun, Enrique.
Most of us
are single point failures.
Yeah, I'll be 70
next week.
Almost in the old days.
I've been working
on Voyager for so long,
I cannot imagine,
uh, leaving the project.
They have
what you can't get from paper.
They understand
the idiosyncrasies
of the spacecraft.
Their whole professional careers
are on this mission
and making
this mission successful.
It's hard for me
to just see this machine,
it's kind of like
a part of, uh...
me.
Very proud
of what I'm doing,
especially
from my background.
I was born and raised
in Mexico.
I was born and raised
in Korea, South Korea,
in a small farming village.
In Colombia,
as a child,
I never,
in my wildest dreams,
thought that I would end up
working with this
particular project.
That was never
in my mind.
I grew up
in , Mississippi.
I wanted to get
into a technical field,
but during that time
segregation was big
and weren't allowed
to go to schools
where they offered
technical degrees.
So, I went to school
in Alabama.
Tuskegee Institute,
now Tuskegee University.
I came to the States
for a small vacation.
November, 1968.
Then I met my to-be wife.
My guardian angel.
I immigrated
to United States
after high school.
But I came in December 1977.
But I didn't know
about the Voyager back then.
I came on in '78,
just prior
to Jupiter encounter.
After exactly
18 months of flight,
Voyager 1 will reach Jupiter
on March 5th.
For Jupiter encounter,
we had to
design and and develop
new and different sequences
or get pictures
and whatever kind of science
it would take.
We didn't know
what we were gonna find.
We sort of set up the camera
on the spacecraft
and we would just stare
at the planet
and we'd take pictures.
And the pictures
would produce movies.
I mean, it was incredible.
We would see something
that we can't even describe.
It it appears
to be radiating 30% more energy
than it ab absorbs
from the sun.
In terms of the foot
of the flux tube,
those are the same
magnetic field lines
that thread the Taurus,
so yes...
We were immersed with
one discovery after the other.
The main surprise
was the amount
of activity on Io.
You showed us the picture
of the volcano there
and that was
that was news.
Before Voyager,
the only known active volcanoes
in the solar system
were here on Earth.
And then we flew by Io,
which is a moon
about the size of our moon.
It had ten times
the volcanic activity of Earth.
Suddenly, we realized
our terra-centric view
of what the planets
and solar system were like.
Nature was really doing
these incredible things.
It was exciting.
We were all early
in our Voyager experience.
That was
a long time ago.
There is still a lot more
we need to learn
about the solar system.
But the spacecraft
isn't all as it was
40 years ago.
I like to think
of the spacecraft
as senior citizens.
Over time
they've aged differently,
different things have broken,
so they don't behave
quite the same today
as they did at launch.
Voyager 2 has more challenges
than Voyager 1.
Voyager 2 is colder
and has less power margin.
Honestly, we don't really know
why it's colder.
It goes back to the fact
that over time
these twin spacecraft
have aged differently.
The whole system
is cooling down.
In particular,
the hydrazine, the propellant
that we use to keep
the spacecraft oriented
to point back to Earth.
16 tiny rocket thrusters
fueled by decomposing hydrazine
turn the craft or change
its velocity when required.
We're within
a couple of degrees
of having that freeze.
As it cools down
and eventually freezes,
uh, we can no longer
point the spacecraft
and it will
just drift off
and that'll be the end
of the mission.
One of the other
sticky issues on Voyager 2,
the only antenna
that can talk to Voyager 2
is DSS, Deep Space Station 43,
in Canberra, Australia.
♪
DSS-43 is gonna be down
from February of 2020
clear out to about
as late as December 2020.
When that antenna is down,
we cannot command Voyager 2.
The mammoth
electronic ears
of today's deep space network
can and do continuously track
and receive data
from probes
to the edge of our solar system.
We have stations
North of Barstow, California,
others in Madrid,
and another one
in Australia in Canberra.
Voyager 2
can only be seen
in the southern hemisphere
because it's so far down
and out of the plane
of the planets.
So, it can only be seen
by the Australian
Deep Space Center Site
that's located outside
of Canberra.
DSN announced
that they were going to be
having some big maintenance
that they had to do
on the Canberra station,
the 70 meter station.
We'll still get downlight,
we'll be able to look in
and view Voyager 2,
make sure it's healthy,
but we don't have
uplink capabilities.
So, if there's a problem
with the spacecraft,
we can't send something
to fix it.
So, we're really kind of, um
scrambling
is not the right word,
but we're maybe
it's controlled scrambling?
Right now,
what we have for Voyager 2
is unsustainable.
Period.
This spacecraft
would not survive the downtime.
We have to put enough margin
on our power and thermal
at the start
of that antenna downtime
to last a year.
Trying to plan
how we get through that period
without causing something
to freeze.
So, full disclosure,
I've had a lot of trouble
with this car this year.
We cannot...
fix it,
uh, although we're close.
It's the engine
control module, ECM.
I'm trying to think of a way
it's kind of like,
as we keep
trying to keep Voyager warm,
we think that it's
when it's cold it fails,
so I'm thinking
of a way to bring a heater in
and maybe
go off the battery
and and warm up
the engine control module
if it ever fails
to uh, to start.
Knock on wood,
it's started
for the last three weeks, so...
I'm not
that mechanically minded,
surprisingly,
for a rocket scientist,
but, uh, I certainly had
the opportunity.
My dad is incredibly handy,
he can fix anything,
and I could have been
out with him
learning all this stuff,
but I I was inside
practicing the piano.
Music's like
a second career.
I'm in six groups.
♪ I'll never be...
Sometimes it's just running
from one musical rehearsal
to the other.
I try
to keep them straight.
I just couldn't decide
throughout my life,
music or engineering.
I decided just to keep
deferring the decision.
I still pinch myself
that these musical dreams
of childhood have come true
just as my, uh, JPL
dreams came true.
Um, who worked on Voyager
in the in the band here?
One, Jeff did.
- No, I didn't.
- Everybody's too young, so
My journey to Voyager
is a long one.
It began when I was
a nerdy kid off in Kansas,
uh, visiting my grandparents.
Thanks a lot.
Uh, can you hear me
in the back okay
with the cordless
headset mic?
We're good? Wonderful.
Anybody in eighth grade?
When I was
in eighth grade,
I had
this weird explorer gene
and wanted to go see
all of Planet Earth.
Every corner of Planet Earth.
My grandparents,
they felt bad,
they're like, you know,
"We'd love to take you somewhere
and go exploring.
We can't,
we have to farm wheat."
"But I have a magazine
that will take you places."
So for the first time
they showed me
National Geographic.
And I read five years
of back issues,
60 issues cover to cover
over two weeks.
This was about 1981.
Right when
the Voyager spacecraft
were flying by Saturn.
We're on our way
for a very interesting ride
through the Saturn system.
In the course
of its journey,
Voyager discovered
three new moons
in Saturn's orbit
and relayed baffling photographs
of Saturn's rings.
We had estimated that
there were hundreds of rings.
What we're finding is
we should be saying thousands.
These, uh, places
have never been visited before.
Seeing them
for the first time
was just this
glorious feeling of exploration.
And as soon as I saw
those images of the planets,
the dozens of moons,
I was hooked.
I just I knew that somehow
I wanted to be involved
in the space program.
And in eighth grade
I said,
"I don't know
anything about this JPL,
what it's like
to live in California,
but that's where
I want to work.
That's what I want to do
with my career and my life."
Took three attempts
to get in the door,
but finally,
my JPL dreams came true.
-What age are we talking about?
-Both both.
- From the '70s?
- Yeah, yeah.
You were there and did that
No, I'm not that old,
but I'm working it now,
so there's there's only,
like, ten of us working it now.
That was my question,
is how many there were
-Very few.
-And Okay.
And but you're
still following it,
it's still out there?
Well, yes, yeah,
we're talking to both every day.
It's still out there?
Both are still out there.
Most most distant
human object, so...
I did not know that.
We penetrated the bubble.
We're outside now,
we're in interstellar space
with both spacecraft.
So, yeah, we're till
still talking to both,
trying to keep them alive.
I'm the newest member
of Voyager.
You never know when
you're the new guy coming in,
how that's gonna work out,
and they've welcomed me
with open arms.
I'm living out
my childhood dream
in kind of
the twilight of my career
and the twilight
of the Voyager mission,
helping keep these two
beautiful spacecraft going.
So, we're sending up
the CRS command here,
command Saturday?
Yes.
Okay, what's the
uh, what's the time...
they go up?
Uh, it's gonna go up
around 2:45 a.m.
Saturday morning.
Okay, Fernando,
you probably
would already do this,
but can you send out a note
when you see, um
Oh, absolutely, yeah,
I will send
a, uh, complete report
as to what the, uh,
power change, uh, that we saw
and, uh, receiving
of the comments.
- Yes.
- Okay. Uh...
We're trying to get the whole
Voyager 2 all lined up
so we can ride out
this antenna downtime.
In order to do that,
we're gonna have to
turn off instruments
or at least turn off
instrument heaters.
We have five fields
and particles instruments
on each spacecraft.
One of those instruments
is not working on Voyager 1...
but nine out of ten
are still functional
after 40 years.
At some point,
we have to start
turning off science instruments.
We lose about four watts
of power, uh, generation a year.
So, we have to keep
turning things off.
And that's
a real Sophie's choice.
How do you decide
which science instruments
turn off first?
But one of
the beautiful things,
all science instruments
have heaters.
So, before you turn off
a science instrument,
we'll try to turn off
the heater
or even swap heaters through
a lower powered heater,
and maybe
the instrument survives.
We need to turn off the heaters
to save power margin,
to give us
the power margin.
Here's
the power margin for Voyager 1.
10.1 watts.
Then we go to Voyager 2,
we only have 7.5 watts.
Right now.
Do the math
and we use
four watts per year.
The light bulb in your fridge,
probably 20 watts.
So, that means
we have
a year and change
to do something.
Because we're not gonna have
the power to keep going.
That's what we're starting
just within
the next week or so.
We're going to be
turning off
a heater
on the CRS instrument.
The CRS
is the Cosmic Ray Subsystem.
Do we turn one on
and then one off or
-Yes.
-Actually, no, that's How
Sun, what's the what what
are the steps in that command?
Well, we turn off bay one heater
to gain the power
-Okay.
-margin and then turn off
the CRS replacement heater
-and turn on
-Okay.
the CRS supplement heater
and then we have
two mitigating commands.
-And then we turn on
-Okay.
the bay one heater back on.
Okay.
Sun, did you see
replacement
or supplemental first?
Uh, we turn up
replacement heater
and then turn on
the supplement heater.
All right, thank you..
I think we feel
there's a 50-50 chance
that the instrument
may freeze,
so we don't know.
I'm the early bird.
I can get my coffee.
This is from home,
my creamer and my sugar,
because I'm the only one
that has sugar.
Everybody's too healthy
for that.
I'm not.
What we're doing
is turning off heaters.
We're gonna do that
with the CRS.
If it works,
one more success.
But we'll see.
160, decimal,
Charlie, foxtrot, golf.
Copy all, thank you.
Yeah, all right.
The commands
are all issued on board
by the central command
computer.
Roughly 14-bit command
that goes
to the power subsystem.
The power subsystem
decodes it
and it determines
which relay is being asked
to be turned on or off.
The power subsystem
then executes that command.
What we've noticed is,
occasionally,
that command
is not ex*cuted properly.
If you think of all
the set of commands on Voyager 2
as as rows and columns,
if you command
a certain command
in a given row or column,
you might inadvertently get
another command in that column.
Voyager 2's the only one
that has that issue.
We have not
figured out, really,
to any level of satisfaction,
what failure is lurking
in the power subsystem
that causes this to happen.
So, it might get worse.
By the time you find out
something has happened,
you know,
it happened 16 hours ago
or 20 hours ago
or whatever.
So, you can't do things
very quickly,
so you got to anticipate
what the spacecraft is gonna do.
Got kind of cold,
but it worked.
It continued to work.
Right now,
the CRS is -76 Fahrenheit.
It was
we never tested it that cold
because we never imagined
we would be,
uh, that cold.
But you see,
scientists are smart.
They probably designed
their instrument
knowing there might be a
an opportunity in the mission
where they'll have to settle
for flying without their heaters
because the power
will be so precious.
We were able to save that
approximately
five watts of power
by turning off,
um, the heater
and and still have
the instrument work.
That was the first time
in 42 years
that the instrument heater
has been off.
I keep a trend of the power.
This is the end.
2030.
2030.
Other things might happen
that alter this getting to 2030,
I'm sure.
But we'll be content,
uh, right here.
2025. Right there.
We're an extended mission,
so it's not as prestigious.
Some people decided
to do other things,
but I decided to stay.
I like
because it's full of challenges.
I never thought
that, uh, programming
or reprogramming a spacecraft
was gonna be
part of my life.
I joined Voyager
for the Uranus encounter.
Uranus is the most
distant object from Earth
ever visited
by a manmade craft.
I was
an assembly language programmer,
the lowest level
that you can program.
I was hired with JPL
as an independent contractor.
I also joined the Voyager
just before
the Uranus encounter.
I went
to University of Texas
and JPL came to our school
to recruit students.
And I didn't know
everybody else was doing
and I didn't know
what I was supposed to be doing,
but it was just exciting to see
everybody getting excited.
It's been a lot of fun
watching them.
They see something
they consider interesting,
they're all jumping up and down
and shaking hands.
I mean, it's like
somebody just had a kid.
The world
was looking at Voyager.
The press, if they knew
that you were from Voyager,
they wanted the inside scoop.
Voyager 2's approach to Uranus
is now a little more
than 16 hours away.
About two minutes ago,
Voyager 2 passed through
its closest approach to Uranus.
We were seeing the images
come down
bits at a time.
Click, click, click, click.
It was amazing.
We were making history
and then from that point on,
and I was just
you know, I was just soaring.
Today, they hit the jackpot.
Six hours of information
as Voyager passed in and out
of the planet's orbit.
That's it!
All right, to all my friends
who made this one possible,
thank you.
Let's see if we get
some good data out there.
And after
finishing the encounter,
I was hired
to stay with Voyager.
Little by little,
as the team
got smaller and smaller,
I assumed other tasks.
When the power
subsystem guy left,
I I took over
that function.
When the propulsion guy left,
I took over that function.
It's amazing
how many hats I have.
After
the Uranus encounter,
I didn't want to go
anywhere else.
I got married on the project
and I had my son on the project.
There were
so many personal, um,
uh, feelings attached to it.
My family,
you know, like, my sons,
they are so familiar
with the Voyagers.
My oldest son,
he sometimes called
when he was in college
and then he says, like,
"Oh, so how's the Voyager?"
You know, it's just like,
"How's your grandma, right?"
So, it's just like a part
of a our family life.
When did you
first build this Lego model?
I was probably
elementary school age.
That's I'm gonna say
sometimes then.
You have the antenna piece,
you have the RTG,
the power generator,
that's this piece,
and this is the scan platform
with the cameras
as well as some other
instruments that were used.
When I first came
from Korea after high school,
I didn't really
have a plan.
I was young
and I wanted to see the world.
So, I joined the m*llitary.
US Army.
It's, like, one of the best
experiences I ever had.
My mom, she had hard life,
and then she wanted us
to be educated,
have a better life,
so she tried so hard.
She passed away when I was,
uh, in the middle school.
I always wanted
to honor my mom.
Yeah, I feel like, yeah,
she would be proud of my me,
if she could see me now.
So, as long
as the Voyager needs me,
I can never,
ever not answer.
My schedule keeps changing,
my "will retire in"
keeps changing.
People keep moving that.
It used to be 2020.
When I see that Voyager,
it doesn't need me,
I will leave
and enjoy
the last phase of my life.
Travel.
My wife loves to travel.
Visit the kids,
the grandkids.
They live in San Francisco.
Eli and Lola.
They're in San Francisco.
It's it's a piece of cake
to go there.
Well, not really.
As you get older,
those seven-hour drive...
you have to stop, twice.
We sort of
pick milestones.
I'd kind of
like to be here
if and when
it makes 50 years.
My personal goal is
is to have the mission last
for 50 years.
I'm hoping
that, uh, we can make 2027,
so we can say,
"Oh, 50 years."
That would be so unique.
For me,
that's a technical success.
It's an an achievement.
It's a it's a goal
that I'd like to participate in.
♪
We're ready for our downtime.
Three months away.
We're building
a giant background sequence now
that will carry Voyager
through its entire downtime,
early February of 2020,
clear through
as late as December of 2020.
I mean,
if we do it right,
I'd say we have 95% chance
of coming out just fine.
You have to remember,
these spacecraft
have been flying for 40 years
and for the last 30 years,
they've been pretty unattended.
We don't command
the spacecraft very often.
The spacecraft is designed
so that it can fly itself.
So, it's been
very autonomous and it's
it's worked very well for
since we left Neptune.
Good morning and welcome
to the five o'clock edition
of Voyager update.
I'm your host,
Suzanne Dodd.
Voyager
is 510,000 kilometers
above the swirling cloud
tops of Neptune.
Well, this is the day.
We've been in an observatory
phase for months, seeing Neptune
as a slowly growing dot...
to something filling
the television screen.
Beautiful,
austere, blue world.
Look at the tire tracks.
The spacecraft entered
the Neptune system
and safely made
its closest approach
to the giant planet
and its unusual moon, Triton.
Triton looks unlike anything
we have seen before.
It's got at least
three distinct types of terrain.
We're all just amazed.
Could one of you wax
philosophical
about how you feel
after 12 years
and being here
at the last planet?
Now, you know, it's all gonna
sink in in the next few days,
that would be the time
to ask the question.
Now, it is on
toward the vast sea
of interstellar space.
Once it went by Neptune,
people sort of
forgot about Voyager.
Frankly, I didn't really know
what had become of Voyager,
um, when I left in 1990.
Many of the world's journalists
have broken down, packed up,
and already left
the Jet Propulsion Site
here in Pasadena.
Um, I think in 2004,
there was a termination review
for Voyager.
We had been going
for more than ten years
after Neptune.
There were some questions
at NASA
whether or not
we were, uh, on a mission
that was anywhere near
finishing.
Why would you terminate
the mission?
Well, 'cause it costs money
and we haven't seen anything.
In 2005 was when we got
the first little hints
that we might be closer
to the edge
of the heliosphere
because we felt
the termination shock.
Once we reached
the termination shock,
where the supersonic solar wind
abruptly slows down
as it approaches
the heliopause,
that told us
we were finally getting close.
I think
if that hadn't happened,
there's probably
a good chance
that they would've
canceled Voyager.
If they had terminated it
in 2004,
we would've never known
the distance of the heliopause,
we would've never known
the interaction
of the magnetic field
and what happens
at the heliopause.
It's one thing to have a theory
about what happens.
The Voyager spacecraft
are actually there in situ.
Not only that,
that there's two spacecraft.
For a modeler,
it's important
because anybody
can make a model
that fits one data point,
one Voyager spacecraft,
but when you have
two data points
that your model has to fit,
then it becomes
much more accurate.
So, it's important to have
both spacecraft still flying.
Morning, Jeff.
- Good morning.
- How are you?
-Fine, thank you.
-All right.
-Morning.
-Good morning.
Thank you.
Andrea got us goodies.
-Yep, Andrea's at it again.
-Yep.
Okay, guys, uh, let's go ahead
and get started. Uh, systems.
Uh, they both look good,
no gaps, no DRs
until the.
Uh, this morning we had
a antenna foresight calibration.
-Assumed that all went well.
-Everything looks good.
By the book.
Uh, just a reminder.
Uh, tomorrow, Todd is giving
a presentation on the...
uh, fuel consumption
and remaining, yeah?
He will tell us whether we're
going to run out of fuel or not.
Slightly important.
We've been waiting
all this time.
Yeah, right.
We are going to be...
for Voyager 2,
we're going to be in the blind.
We think we're ready.
Yeah, everything
seems to be ready and...
double check, triple check,
make sure
that everything is ready to go,
and it seems like
like that's the case.
There may be some last minute
tests that have to be done,
but for the most part, I think
we're we're ready to go.
We have made
the decision.
The, uh, power that we have
provided to the spacecraft
is enough to be able to go
be on the other side
of the downtime.
But it's still
a 42-year-old spacecraft.
And you're asking it
to become
a 43-year-old spacecraft.
We don't know
what's in store for us.
Today
is a special event.
If we're not ready,
we cannot let it go down.
We're under a lot of stress.
There are
a lot of uncertainties.
This is the challenge
of this job.
Though, I don't understand
myself why I'm so into it.
Just kind of feeling
you're responsible for it.
We're going to be doing
a rotation
of the spacecraft
around the Earth line.
It's called a mag-roll.
A magnetometer roll
is a calibration we do
for the magnetometer
instrument.
And what we do is maneuver
the spacecraft in, uh, 360°.
The rotation
of the whole spacecraft
is guided by the gyroscope.
The gyros consume
a certain amount of power,
which is 14.4 watts.
The the spacecraft
doesn't have that kind of power,
so what we do
is we turn a heater,
we turn it off,
and that gives us 24 watts.
And then we turn,
almost instantaneously,
the gyros on.
Sweeps 360°,
gets the magnetic field
in all directions,
and it uses that
to calibrate the instruments
and keep them operating
properly.
After the whole thing,
then we reverse everything
back to what it used to be.
We're expecting to have
a very good mag-roll.
If something stops working,
immediately,
the power will let us know
that there is something funny.
But that's never been the case.
And hopefully
won't happen today.
- 4-3 Voyager ace.
- 4-3.
Yeah, I would like to give you
a briefing about the mag-roll.
I'm ready.
We're expecting
variations in downing.
Please disable con-scan
at 0230
and con-scan enable
at 0320.
Okay, copy that, so, uh,
fluctuations, uh,
from 023A.
Uh, con-scan disable 0230,
and re-enable at 0320.
That is affirm.
Okay,
so things are happening.
The green one
is the roll gyro position
and that one will tell us
when we start rolling.
And that will be
a little bit delayed from
from what, uh,
what we see
from the station
because we have
that five to six minutes
and I always put a timer
to start looking
for this type of signals.
Data control,
Voyager ace
on mic on one.
Voyager ace to control.
Yes, I did I do have
a, uh, dropout in telemetry.
I was just wondering
if that was between
the change from 35 to TSB2.
Yes.
Copy that. Thank you.
Okay.
So, could we turn this off?
When you look things
in retrospect,
then you start appreciating
the opportunities
that life gave you,
that at the time,
you don't really understand
and you don't know
what what's going to happen.
I grew up
in Bogotá, Colombia.
My ex-father-in-law,
I met him in 1973.
I was, uh, 16 years old.
At that time, he was already
a well-established painter.
Armando Villegas.
He opened my eyes
to the art of fine art.
It became
a big part of my life.
♪
But I knew, as a child,
that I wanted to be
an aerospace engineer.
The Moon landing was the major
major thing for me.
... command override off.
Copy it down, Eagle.
Looking at the Moon,
there were people
on the Moon.
It was unbelievable,
and so inspiring.
I decided I want to be
in the space program.
But being in Colombia,
there was nothing,
no space program.
So, I had no choice.
I said, "Okay, I'm going to come
to the United States."
I knew that probably
I would never go back
to Colombia.
Saying goodbye
to my family...
that was not easy.
I never saw my father cry.
So, the only time
that I saw my father cry was,
um, the night before.
And we were saying goodbye.
And we embraced,
and, uh, that was the very first
time that I saw my dad crying.
It's beautiful to remember that,
you know?
Seeing that kind of emotion
coming out of your
your father that never cried.
So, it wasn't easy,
but, uh, I was ready.
I came here June 11, 1991.
I had no prospects
of a job
and I was the sole provider.
It was very difficult.
I was able
to ask for a hamburger.
I had that much English.
And I had to work
in construction.
Actually,
it was not construction,
it was destruction.
I didn't have
the proper gear.
I was eating dust.
And one day,
one of those heavy doors
landed on my foot.
I could barely walk.
But, regardless
of the challenges,
I was happy.
I knew that I was on my way
to something better.
I got into
the University of Texas
for aerospace engineering.
Later, I came to JPL
asking for advice.
I came asking for advice,
and at the end he said
it was a really nice interview.
I couldn't believe it.
A couple of years later,
after graduation,
in May 16, 1998,
that's when I began
to work at JPL.
Voyager ace, 4-3.
4-3, Voyager ace.
Uh, yeah, we just
had a telemetry countage.
Uh, would you like
the?
Uh, copy that,
no, I got it as well.
Thank you.
And, uh, probably
we need to turn cameras off.
I need to go
and consult with
So, that's it.
So, I might want to check
on my phone throughout.
You're gonna have me sit down.
Is that the idea?
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, yeah, okay.
So, I can hide I can hide
my phone in my pocket.
- Yes.
- Okay.
No.
You know, basically...
it didn't go
quite as we wanted it to.
So, we're working through
what it what did happen
and that's about as much as
I can tell you right now.
Correct.
That's, uh, to be determined.
We have to make sure
that Voyager 2 is okay
before we take
the antenna down.
Hello?
It's been really wild.
Um, basically, the mag-roll
did not ex well...
Certain things happened,
unusual things happened
during the mag-roll
that should have not happened.
Still,
I mean, we do not know
we don't know everything,
so we're working overtime.
Everybody's working overtime.
If you're driving a car
down the street
and the light changes red,
you step on the brake,
and in three-tenths
of a second,
the pedal is depressed
and you're stopping.
That's because you saw the light
change red right away.
If you're on a spacecraft
and something goes wrong,
we don't know about that
until the radio signal
that detected the problem
gets transmitted
back to the Earth.
Which can take hours.
And then you figure out
what happened on the Earth
and do something.
But engineers
are problem solvers,
that's what they wanna do,
they want to solve problems.
The tougher the problem,
the more they like it.
We're trying to recover
one step at a time.
This has been the craziest.
I mean, we've had scares,
we have things
that we have to react,
but very quickly, I mean,
nothing that has lasted
this long.
And we we don't know
what's going to happen.
With the heaters off,
it's a race against time.
If the hydrogen freezes,
then the spacecraft
starts stumbling
and, uh, we lose
the spacecraft forever.
It's a challenge
on top of a challenge
because with Voyager 2,
the command frequency
changes with temperature.
Since the spacecraft temperature
is going down,
we had to figure out
the right frequency.
But you don't know how fast
the temperature is changing.
We have to make
the best guess we can.
It's very stressful.
The time is critical.
Finally,
we sent a command.
Turn gyros off
and heaters back on.
We were crossing our fingers,
uh, hoping for the best.
Everybody's
looking at the monitors
waiting for the signal.
It took 35 hours.
But finally it said
that the commands were received
by the spacecraft.
It was just amazing.
I mean, it's just beautiful.
Phew,
the relief that you feel
to see that,
"Okay, we were able to save
the spacecraft.
We were just about
to put the spacecraft
back into its normal
configuration
in terms of temperature.
All of a sudden,
they just said,
"Okay, grab everything
and go home."
New alarm bells
ringing tonight
on the Coronavirus outbreak...
The Governor of Washington
declaring
a state of emergency.
Tens of millions
of us work from home
while offices
sit largely empty
from California
to Connecticut...
I've got this thing
that says "an installer"
and it says,
"Do you want to move
the Zoom installer
to the trash?"
Okay,
Beth has the thing installing.
Hey,
succeeded in installation.
Hey, I see you.
There. Hi!
We did it.
I can go have a drink.
It was simple.
Okay.
Can you hear me okay now?
Yeah, I don't know
what's going on with the mic.
For some reason
it didn't, uh
I couldn't hear you
and you couldn't hear me.
- Sorry.
- No, that's fine.
Minky!
My wife is coming for the cat.
Basically,
I had about a day notice.
So, I grabbed my laptop
on the night of March 16th
and headed home
and have not been back
to the Voyager area since.
So, it was like,
boom, the hammer came down.
We had this anomaly
January 25th,
the antenna
was actually supposed to go down
February 5th.
NASA got involved and said,
"You need to demonstrate
that Voyager 2
is ready for this downtime
or we won't allow
the antenna to go down."
Everybody agreed that
the Voyager spacecraft was safe
and it was the right thing to do
to take the antenna down.
They started that work
March 9th.
Deep Space Station 43
is in pieces,
undergoing major surgery
to become a better communicator.
It'll take many months
and a few nervous moments.
They started it
March 9th and, uh,
we all went into COVID,
you know, a week later.
It is it
daunting and scary.
People people are wondering
when it's all gonna end.
Not a very happy environment.
There's a lot of effort
required to do this right.
And, of course,
we don't want to mess it up.
So, we're
we're very deliberate,
making sure
that we don't do, uh...
anything stupid.
You just
have to figure out
everything
that has to work right
for it not to fail.
And then you have to do
every one of those things
and you have to do
every them
each
every one of them correctly,
and if you can figure out
all the things
that you need to do
and do them all right,
you're you're fine.
We may get a chance
to actually test
the uplink capability
here in October.
Doesn't mean that
the antenna would be online,
but if we can at least
do a test
with Voyager in October
to say we can send
a command to it,
then we know
that we're out of the woods
as far as being able
to command the spacecraft.
That is the plan.
But, uh, who knows?
I mean, you're talking about
mid-'70s technology.
The future is not certain.
♪
I'm the only one here
team-wise.
The rest of the people
that are here right now
are our movers.
I'll show you what the
conference room looks like.
Because we've got
essential products
and boxes all packed up
in there,
there's nothing
on the walls anymore.
Remember all our awards?
Big trash bins everywhere.
I thought
that we were very well-prepared
for the downtime.
But we had to tweak things
more than we would have
since we were moving
the facilities.
NASA made the room for us
to go back
over to the laboratory.
We had a lot of things to move,
a lot of things to pack.
We've been there for like,
uh, gosh, close to 20 years.
It's more
than just taking your plant
from one office
to the other office.
It was all the operations
hardware got moved,
got upgraded
because it's old,
so we had to change
operating systems.
We had some nightmares
where some
low-level engineer
was told
to take the network down
and the whole command system
that Voyager uses
was offline and damaged,
and it's a bit of
the low-tech things
that, uh, can k*ll a mission.
We struggle, you know?
Different environment,
version machines,
but in all the adjustments,
the new computers,
the new ways of doing things,
that keeps me going.
As you know...
tragedy in the family
happened and...
right in the middle
of, uh, the pandemic.
She always had issues
with high blood pressure.
When I got home around 6:00,
I asked my son,
"Where's your mom?"
He says, "Well, sh
she should be at the office."
So, I called her office,
nothing.
I asked my son,
"Can you go check on her?"
And he went
and checked on her
and he found her
on the floor.
She had
some kind of aneurysm.
It was not possible
to operate.
But, uh,
we kept fighting
for 17 days and...
and that's when she passed away,
on February 2nd.
50-plus years together...
uh...
yeah.
I lost a lot of weight,
about 17 pounds.
But, uh,
work keeps me busy.
Uh...
I always love Voyager.
It makes me feel
that I'm needed someplace.
That I have the expertise
to take Voyager,
uh, past 2025.
Maybe longer.
♪
We did have
an initial test last night.
We expect it
to be successful
and hopefully everything
will go back to normal
beginning of next year.
As time progresses,
we're going to do
less and less.
Some would say that there are
only eight more commands
we have to issue
on Voyager.
And those are the ones
that gradually turn down
the power consumption
until we're to the point
where we're sitting
at 202 watts
and we can't go
any lower.
The end is coming.
And the end
may take ten years.
It may take two years,
we don't really know,
but, um, it's coming.
We're gonna come into the office
one day,
expect to see data
from this pass,
and we won't see it.
And then we'll try
and get some other antennas
and maybe more antennas.
Try and really see
if we can find a signal.
And after a week,
after a month,
after three months
of looking for it...
if we still
don't hear anything...
we will declare
the mission over.
And so,
billions of miles from Earth,
the spacecraft,
its instruments dead,
its mission fulfilled,
may end up in orbit
about some distant star.
So, one of the
one of the things that, uh,
strikes me, uh,
when I think about Voyager
in the early days,
there was a time
when I was a kid...
and I had a role
in doing something for the very,
very, very first time.
Voyager is now
on a 105-mile high
parking orbit.
Heading down
over the South Atlantic
on a trajectory which will...
As we get
to the end of the mission,
it becomes it's special
because it's going to be
the last day.
I'm sort of
looking back...
describing how...
it feels
to fly something that's...
at the time,
only a couple of years old,
but in the end,
would be 50 years old.
And...
what it means
to lose them.
There are things
that are left behind
that are sort of the residue
of the work we do.
The good friends we had.
The people
who worked on Voyager,
all 1,200 of them...
mostly gone.
Well, it's sad
because the mission's ending,
so you're not gonna get
the science back,
but I think it's more related
to the people.
The people will disperse,
you won't see them as much.
It'll be difficult
for the people
who are still working
on the project.
Many of them have worked
on the project,
if not from launch,
then shortly after launch.
So, they've put
their whole career on Voyager,
and so to have
Voyager end will be
it'll be very difficult.
I know it
the day is gonna come.
This is like when you see
your children grow up
and you kind of
you're sad,
but at the same time,
you kind of feel like, uh,
wow, you know,
"We accomplished something."
When you feel
that you've gone the extra mile,
then I think
that you can rest and just...
let it go.
We count every day
as a blessing, but we've
we've learned not to bet
against the spacecraft too.
'Cause it always seems to, uh,
find that resilient energy
to keep going and and, uh,
a large part of that
is the team,
the the the brilliant
engineers and scientists I work
with that have found ways
to keep it going
and delivering
top-notch science.
The technology
is something to behold.
If Las Vegas oddsmakers
would have had to pay off
the optimists
that honestly felt as though
this mission
would be as successful as it is,
there would be a few rich people
walking around NASA today.
The fact is,
Voyager b*at the odds,
incredible odds,
and although in any mission
of this type
there must be a certain degree
of luck involved,
the human factor
cannot be underestimated.
I've only worked
a couple years on Voyager,
but I trying to stand
on the shoulders
of those giants,
the people that toiled away
in anonymity
keeping these
these two spacecraft alive.
Just to be considered, uh,
you know,
a cub scout alongside them.
Those long term explorers,
I'll take it.
It's an amazing honor
and privilege.
The explorers are the Voyagers.
Not us.
We're just the drivers.
It's like Lewis and Clark.
They were explorers.
But let's imagine
that they had
a guardian angel...
looking after them.
They were not explorers.
They were just guardian angels.
4-3 Voyager ace.
Voyager ace,
station 4-3,
I have you.
I read you the same
and we have a command uplink
with, uh, Voyager 2.
And I'm ready to copy.
Please turn command mode on
at 194900.
♪
It's Quieter in the Twilight (2022)
Moderator: Maskath3