NASA launched Voyager I and Voyager II in 1977, on a 12-year mission to study and send back data from Jupiter and Saturn. That was the stated mission, as that was all that the U.S. government was willing to fund. However, scientists and engineers at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab had higher hopes for the probes.
Forty years later, the two spacecraft are still sending back data, Voyager I from interstellar space, and Voyager II as it is crossing the the boundary of the solar system. Possibly even more surprising is that NASA engineers are still monitoring the mission.All explorations demand sacrifices in exchange for uncertain outcomes. Some of those sacrifices are social: how many resources we collectively devote to a given pursuit of knowledge….
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