Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402
Stock No. 033-000-00817-1
Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 5, 1977, beginning its journey to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond.
Introduction
No other generation has had the opportunity or the technology to reach beyond our world—to see, to touch, to hear the forces that shape our universe. In slightly over two decades, man has ingeniously explored five distant planets—and two dozen moons. We have seen their weather and surfaces, landed on some, probed the atmospheres of others, and listened to their radio noises.
Under the planetary exploration program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Voyager Mission, begun in 1972, was designed to explore Jupiter, Saturn, their satellites, rings, magnetic fields, and interplanetary space. Two automated, reprogrammable spacecraft, Voyagers 1 and 2, were launched in late summer of 1977. Their goals: the outer planets.
Both spacecraft made astounding discoveries in the Jupiter system in 1979—a thin ring, a thick ionized sulfur and oxygen torus, an actively volcanic satellite—these were but a few of the treasures yielded by the two Jupiter flybys.
Now, Voyager 1 has completed exploration of its final target: the ringed planet Saturn and its enigmatic giant satellite, Titan. True to the generally unpredictable nature of planetary exploration, the treasures of the Saturn system far exceeded all expectations. We learned more about Saturn in one week than in all of recorded history, thanks to one trusty robot no larger than a compact car and to thousands of diligent and imaginative people.
Both spacecraft carry an assortment of optical, radiometric, and fields and particles sensing instruments. Taken together, their data present a comprehensive picture of a planetary system—and clues to what is happening, what has happened, and what may happen in our universe.