This is a guest post by my partner, Dave.
In 1977, NASA realized they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—were aligning in a way that wouldn’t happen again for generations. It was a chance to visit them all.
So they built two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, pieced together with creativity, hope, and spare parts. These scrappy machines had one mission: travel to the edge of the solar system and tell us what they saw.
They sent two spacecraft because the journey was long and fraught with danger. If one didn’t make it, perhaps the other might.
Both survived. They flew past Jupiter’s swirling storms, pierced through Saturn’s intricate rings, and revealed Uranus spinning on its side. After Saturn, they went separate ways, then after twelve years of travel, Voyager 2 finally reached Neptune. Along the way, they discovered new moons, revealed secrets, and rewrote textbooks.
They accomplished their mission. But they weren’t done.
Even as their power supplies dimmed and instruments failed, the Voyagers kept on going. They continued reporting new science as they left our solar system and ventured into interstellar space.
Today, 48 years later, only the largest antennas on Earth can hear their faint whispers. Yet these little machines are still out there, looking, measuring, probing, sending us data from the darkness between the stars.
We can learn a lot from the Voyagers. Beyond our original dreams are possibilities that we could never have anticipated. Be like the Voyagers. Set goals but not limits. Discover what lies beyond.
