A history of the Voyager mission

It’s rare to find an amateur documentarian that’s really good. I think this is one of those cases. I was really interested watching “NASA’s Voyager Mission,” by Jackson Tyler (his YouTube channel is “Homemade Documentaries”).

I grew up with Voyager’s mission, from the time when I was 7 years old. I was 9 when Voyagers 1 and 2 reached Jupiter. I was about 19 when Voyager 2 visited Neptune. What I missed was the beginning of the mission. I was too young to keep track of it. I missed the launch of the two probes. So, what’s nice is this documentary covers the beginning, and intimate details of the Grand Tour. It also covers the backstory of when Voyager was planned, in the mid-1960s, who inspired it, and the decisions that were made during the mission’s planning. A surprising thing was the first proposal was just to send these probes to Jupiter and Saturn. A few had the idea to send them to Uranus and Neptune, as well, but they had to fight to get them included in the mission plan.

Something that I found really nice was Tyler went back in history to other scientific observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, briefly comparing them to what was found through Voyager, and the Cassini probe, giving a sense of the  progress in planetary science over the centuries.

Even though I am familiar with what these probes got during the mission, this documentary adds more to what I knew. So, enjoy the feast! Prepare for a long ride, too. It’s 2 hours, 45 minutes.