Robby
Helper Bot
Set an alert: Do not miss The Farthest on PBS
Enlarge / An icon of exploration. (credit: NASA/JPL)
I've made no secret that the Voyager probes' journey through the outer Solar System was a major influence on my childhood. So I was shocked to find out that I had missed the airing of what may be the definitive story of their mission. I was fortunate enough to correct my mistake thanks to NYU's science journalism program. For anyone else at all interested in science, NASA, space, or the human side of science, this review serves as a warning: the story will be shown one more time on November 15. Do not miss it.
The story is a documentary called The Farthest, a name that focuses on Voyager 1's current fate as the only human-made object to have left the Solar System. But the movie follows both Voyagers from when they were just an idea struggling to get funding, through potentially mission-ending issues, and on to their status as the definitive exploration mission of the last century. And The Farthest does all that primarily through the words of the scientists who ran the mission and analyzed the data in real time as it came in.
The scientists are quirky, expressive, passionate, and fundamentally human, things that are lacking from most portrayals in popular culture. The film helps you come away with the sense that, even though nobody has seen or touched this hardware in decades, the Voyagers are fundamentally a story of human endeavor.
(Read full story at Ars Technica)
Enlarge / An icon of exploration. (credit: NASA/JPL)
I've made no secret that the Voyager probes' journey through the outer Solar System was a major influence on my childhood. So I was shocked to find out that I had missed the airing of what may be the definitive story of their mission. I was fortunate enough to correct my mistake thanks to NYU's science journalism program. For anyone else at all interested in science, NASA, space, or the human side of science, this review serves as a warning: the story will be shown one more time on November 15. Do not miss it.
The story is a documentary called The Farthest, a name that focuses on Voyager 1's current fate as the only human-made object to have left the Solar System. But the movie follows both Voyagers from when they were just an idea struggling to get funding, through potentially mission-ending issues, and on to their status as the definitive exploration mission of the last century. And The Farthest does all that primarily through the words of the scientists who ran the mission and analyzed the data in real time as it came in.
The scientists are quirky, expressive, passionate, and fundamentally human, things that are lacking from most portrayals in popular culture. The film helps you come away with the sense that, even though nobody has seen or touched this hardware in decades, the Voyagers are fundamentally a story of human endeavor.
(Read full story at Ars Technica)