The Farthest Page #11

That's the last port of call,

the last thing we'll see in our

solar system is now behind us.

[piano music]

SMITH:

We could have enhanced the color a bit

to make a somewhat prettier picture,

but out of respect

to the Voyager spacecraft

we decided to show it to you

just as it is.

[applause]

[piano music]

SMITH:

The way I looked at it

was gee, we did something really great.

Very, very successful mission.

SODERBLOM:

A little weepy.

I mean it's... there was a lot of

energy put into this mission.

SPEAKER:

We have ignition and we have lift-off.

[piano music]

SODERBLOM:

Years of intense effort.

It was the end of a sentimental journey.

[piano music]

KOHLHASE:

We did it.

We pulled it off, and that's important.

It is.

["Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry]

Deep down in Lousiana

close to New Orleans

Way back up in the woods

among the evergreens

There stood a log cabin

made of earth and wood

Where lived a country boy

named Johnny B. Goode

HANSEN-KOHARCHECK:

We had a big party at JPL,

Chuck Berry was there,

so that was a good send-off for Voyager.

CHUCK BERRY:

Go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go

Go, Johnny, go, go

Johnny B. Goode

[music ends]

DODD:

Rockstar moment and sail on Voyager.

CARL SAGAN:

And I'm going to go get some sleep

or maybe I'll do

a little more dancing...

Thank you very much, Lou?

[clapping]

BELL:

Meanwhile Voyager 1

is still kind of cruising out there,

getting farther and farther out,

and a number of folks on the team,

including Carl Sagan,

had this idea that before we

have to shut the cameras down,

let's turn around,

look back towards the sun

and let's take a picture

of our solar system

unlike any that had ever

been taken before.

And there was actually opposition to it.

PORCO:

They just didn't want to do it.

They couldn't get their heads around

what would be the point

of taking a picture

of the Earth and Jupiter and so on

because they're just going to be

little points of light.

So Carl being Carl

actually went all the way

to the NASA administrator

and got him to direct

the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

to take this series of pictures.

SMITH:

Absolutely zero science in it.

Absolutely none.

NARRATOR:

From a unique vantage point,

nearly four billion miles away,

Voyager 1's cameras turned homeward

to take family snapshots.

It was Valentine's Day, 1990.

[music playing]

HANSEN-KOHARCHECK:

When we did our portrait

of each of the planets,

I was the first person

to look at the pictures

and I knew every blemish,

and so I could pretty quickly go

blemish, blemish, blemish,

and I thought, well, where's the Earth?

Where?

How could we... you know?

And then I realized

there was a lot of...

there were a lot of streaks

of light in that image,

and I realized finally

that the Earth was sitting

in one of those rays of light.

You know, I just sat there for a while

just kind of realizing wow,

that's the Earth, you know,

that's Voyager looking back

at the Earth,

and then once I had sort of recovered,

I started calling people.

I called Brad.

Brad, we got it,

called Carl, Carl, we got it.

Called my dad.

[laughs]

STONE:
And so this is

a different kind of milestone

than the scientific milestones

we've had.

One that is really symbolic...

PORCO:
I'm an imaging scientist,

so I first realized,

oh, this didn't turn out

the way we thought

it was going to turn out,

and my first impulse is to take my hand

and wipe away the dust, because

there was some dust on it.

Well, one of the pieces of dust

that I wanted to wipe away

was the Earth.

But it didn't matter

because in the hands of Carl,

he turned it into an allegory

on the human condition.

CARL SAGAN:

And the next slide.

The Earth in a sunbeam.

And in this color picture

you can see that it is in fact

less than a pixel,

and this is where we live,

on a blue dot.

On that blue dot,

that's where everyone you know

and everyone you ever heard of

and every human being who ever lived

lived out their lives.

I think this perspective

underscores our responsibility

to preserve and cherish that blue dot,

the only home we have.

NARRATOR:
The two Voyagers

still communicate with Earth

nearly every day.

It takes huge antennas

to detect their faint signals,

now less than one trillionth of a watt.

The spacecraft continue to be tracked

as they begin the final part

of their mission,

to travel beyond the edge

of our solar system,

into interstellar space.

It's in this never travelled

region between the stars

that Voyager and its Golden Record

will have a chance of being discovered.

KRIMIGIS:

At the time we were designing Voyager,

interstellar space,

where the boundary was,

was totally unknown.

We had our eyes

on the interstellar mission.

Are we going to boost the spacecraft

to get out of our solar system

and into the galaxy?

It was a shot in the dark

because nobody knew how far.

Uncharted waters.

[inquisitive uplifting music]

BELL:
The magnetic field of

the sun can only extend so far,

it's a bubble around our star,

all the stars have bubbles,

we can see the bubbles

around other stars out there,

so we know that they have bubbles.

Where does our bubble end?

NARRATOR:

Somewhere beyond Neptune

is the edge of the bubble

around our sun.

At the heliopause two forces balance...

the outward pressure of the solar wind

and the pressure of interstellar space.

But how far out it was, no one was sure.

DON GURNETT:

We kept going

and years went by and years went by

and we don't detect

the interstellar medium.

[music continues]

BELL:

Throughout the 1990s,

still didn't find

the edge of the bubble.

Throughout the 2000s,

still didn't find

the edge of the bubble,

and then finally in 2012 Voyager 1,

which is going the fastest,

which is the farthest,

started to see these funny things happen

to the squiggly lines.

This crazy spike.

And everybody goes, oh, is that it?

And then it goes back to normal.

And then it was just literally

one magical day in...

it was in August of 2012

that everything changed

and it was like pfff just...

popped out of the bubble.

Voyager 1 has left our solar system.

It's the first thing built by humans

that has left our solar system

and now it's in interstellar space.

[violin music]

VO IN ARCHIVE:

NASA says that Voyager 1

has become the first man-made object

to reach interstellar space,

the cold dark region between stars.

OBAMA IN ARCHIVE:

And we've slipped the outermost grasp

of our solar system with Voyager 1,

the first human-made object

to venture into interstellar space.

STONE:

It's a wonderful achievement, actually.

When you think of it, it's historic,

it's our first step out of our bubble

which has been around all the planets

and around the Earth

essentially forever,

and now finally some little

thing that we have built

has left that bubble and is

in the space between the stars.

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