Friday, August 25, 2017

On a Voyage

FAR FROM HOME: A new PBS program, "The Farthest," aired last night. We gathered 'round the telly to watch. It was a captivating documentary about humanity's greatest expedition, the Voyager mission.

Two amazing spacecrafts, which had memory 240,000 times less than today's average smart phone, but they are boldly going where no man has gone before. 

Here's a trailer for the show: https://youtu.be/znTdk_de_K8

Following is CJ's review of the program.
Last night, KCTS9, our local PBS station, aired "The Farthest", a documentary about the Voyager mission, a NASA project to send information about humans to potential extraterrestrial life. According to its page on PBS' website, The Farthest tells the captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity’s greatest achievements in exploration: NASA’s Voyager mission, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this August. The twin spacecraft—each with less computing power than a cell phone—used slingshot trajectories to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They sent back unprecedented images and data that revolutionized our understanding of the spectacular outer planets and their many peculiar moons.
The most well known (not necessarily the most important) aspect of both of the Voyagers is the "Golden record". The Golden Record contains pictures and sound (in particular music and speech clips) designed to give an idea to aliens as to what our planet is like. The sources used in the Golden Record came from many different places and periods (from ancient Greek greetings to modern English, and classical music to Johnny B. Goode, for example).
In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to exit the solar system.

PBS has many video clips - and the entire program - on its website. Check it out here: http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/video/

T

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