(rocket blasting) - [Narrator] After the race to the moon the United States charts a new
future with a new spacecraft. And a robotic mission to Jupiter struggles to get off the ground. - [John] We started
tearing this thing apart and really began to find the warts on it. - [Narrator] Meanwhile another spacecraft attempts to complete the first reconnaissance
of the outer planets. - [Torrence] The initial
calculation showed that we were going to be in great danger of getting really fuzzy pictures if we didn't do something
to the spacecraft. - ISS wide angle electronics is off. (faint speaking)
replacement heater is off. - [William] And at close encounter we would all be holding our breaths. You can't believe how exciting that was. - [Ed] The images that
were returned this morning revealed a world unlike any
of the others that we've seen. (people exclaiming)
(people applauding) - [Narrator] Yet even
in the midst of triumph the future of planetary
exploration seems in doubt. - [Female Speaker] I'm
kind of having a hard time reconciling all this to know what the next generation's
going to be doing in space. - [Narrator] The Footsteps of Voyager JPL and the beginnings of the Space Age. Next. (light music) ♪ I was strolling on the Moon one day ♪ ♪ In the merry, merry month of December ♪ - May, May! May is the month this year.
- May, that's right. - [Narrator] In December of 1972 Apollo 17 astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan took the
last steps on the Moon. ♪ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da ♪ ♪ Dee, da, dee ♪ - Okay, Bob.
♪ Da, da, da, da, da, dee ♪ Let me tell you, Bob. This flag is a beautiful picture. That's beautiful. This has gotta be one of the
most proud moments of my life. I guarantee you. - [Narrator] NASA had
hoped for more missions. But the race against the Soviet Union to be the first to the Moon had been won. America's priorities
were turning elsewhere. - [Gene] This is Gene
and I'm on the surface. And as I take man's last
step from the surface I'd like to just let what I
believe history will record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17. (intense orchestral music) - [Narrator] Long before this moment NASA was charting a new future with a very different kind of spacecraft. One with wings that could
glide back to a runway. The Shuttle, as it came to be known, could be reused over and over again to ferry astronauts and cargo into space. Early designs envisioned an
enormous rocket flown by pilots that would launch the Shuttle into orbit. This extraordinary concept
was as unaffordable as it was unrealistic. The final design was severely scaled back. What did not change were expectations. Proponents promised that
with this winged orbiter access to space would
become routine commutes. The Shuttle was to be cheaper and safer. But to make the economic model work meant abandoning expendable rockets. The Shuttle's manifest
was to carry all cargo for NASA, commercial companies, and even defense and
intelligence agencies. But the Shuttle's reach went
only as far as low earth orbit. And that was not good news for
exploring the solar system. - This was threatening the
whole planetary program. But in this monopoly craze NASA said, no, you can't just buy regular launch vehicles that were available. We're gonna liquidate those. We're gonna force them to close. - [Narrator] Bruce Murray was
often out of step with NASA. But he viewed the policy
of a Shuttle monopoly as a threat to the entire space agency. - And so there were two issues. One was my programmatic view that this was a crazy thing to do, and would, by the way, kill the planetary program, which it did for a decade. But more generally, it
would destroy the agency. So the agency that had been able to do extraordinary things like Apollo was going to consciously transform itself to running a space transportation system because it had gained a monopoly. This was dreadfully wrong on both grounds. (rocket launching) - [Narrator] Murray's
criticisms were hard to see when the Shuttle first flew. The Shuttle not only looked
like a space age vehicle, it impressively performed like one. (people cheering) And Murray's opinions did nothing to discourage an
enterprising group of JPLers from trying to hitch
a ride on the Shuttle. The team's leader was Charles Elachi. And he pitched a series of
radar science experiments. - And basically, it's a
configuration of it at launch. It will be configured in this arrangement. Once we get in orbit then the antenna panels will be opened which will take about
twenty minute operation to open the antennas. - [Narrator] NASA said
yes to the proposal. And the second flight carried on board the Shuttle Imaging Radar A, the first in a series of radar payloads. - [Male Speaker] Okay, Sally. We've got the arm secured right now. We're just getting ready
to activate the SIR-A. We've got the power on and we're getting ready to turn it on. - [Sally Ride] Okay, sounds good. - [Narrator] The radar experiments demonstrated how the Shuttle could be used to better understand our own planet. But for spacecraft
destined beyond Earth orbit the Shuttle's limitations
would be crippling. (deliberative orchestral music) Jupiter. Only the Sun is larger than
the fifth planet from our star. It is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in
our solar system combined. The Pioneer and Voyager missions had provided the first flyby
glimpses of this giant. The next step was to send an orbiter. - There was something called the Jupiter Orbiter with Probe, JOP. And the science team was consisted only of fields and particle people
and atmospheric people. And they wanted to build a probe that would go into the
atmosphere of Jupiter and the simplest spacecraft
to carry it there would have just be a spinning spacecraft. And you could slap some
fields and particles on the spinning spacecraft, and you had a winner. - [Narrator] Not everyone thought so. Other scientists were clamoring for different instruments and a camera. And that posed a dilemma. Taking images requires a steady platform while measuring magnetic fields calls for a spinning spacecraft. To solve these conflicting requirements, NASA assigned the project to JPL in 1975. The result was Galileo, a novel engineering design featuring both spinning
and stable platforms. - That quickly escalated
into a really major, major big design. Big cost change, big mass change. We started tearing this thing apart and really began to find the warts on it and, you know, attack them one by one. But the spacecraft got bigger and more complex as a result of that. - [Narrator] Galileo
also had the challenge of being the first planetary mission assigned for deployment by the Shuttle. But to travel beyond Earth orbit would require strapping on
a second booster rocket. There were two boosters
from which to choose. One was the Centaur. - The problem with a
Centaur is it's liquid fuel. If there's any kind of
leak of the liquid fuel into the Shuttle bay while they're trying to
get this thing up in orbit it could be potentially catastrophic. A very volatile fuel. - [Narrator] The Centaur
was seen as a dangerous risk and NASA ruled out its use. - And they were right,
it was nuts to do that. It was not safe. So, cancel that. And the only other thing we have is a solid fuel rocket called the IUS, which is actually an Air
Force rocket developed. And you can use that. But that won't get you to Jupiter! - [Narrator] That was
because the IUS booster was still on the drawing boards and it was not powerful enough. To use this booster also required a gravity assist around Mars. The launch dates slipped a year resulting in the first in a
long list of budget increases. Then it was realized
that Galileo was heavier than the Shuttle could safely lift. More powerful engines had to be built. NASA next directed JPL to explore dividing the mission in two: launching the spacecraft and the probe on separate
Shuttle missions. That plan was scrapped, too. Galileo was again delayed. - There's this kind of back and forth. And every time the JPL engineers are kind of back to the drawing board accommodating different
payload specifications, different trajectories
they can accomplish, every time, they have
to redesign the mission, and it's just a major headache here. - [Narrator] Galileo also became
a political lightning rod. And now engineering
decisions were being debated on the floor of the House. - Earlier this year we passed a NASA authorization bill overwhelmingly in this House that said that we would go with the IUS. Now, you can vote any way you want to. I have no vested interest. - The problem here is
that you have a vehicle that will get Galileo into
a geosynchronous orbit. It may be launched probably a year later, but as compared to the
IUS and the kick stage, it will get there a year earlier. - [Narrator] The booster
dispute finally came to an end when President Ronald
Reagan signed a bill in 1982 that by law ordered NASA to
use the liquid fuel booster. Galileo's launch date was
delayed for yet another year, but at least there was now a path forward. (camera shuttering) Or so it seemed. (deliberative ambient music) Galileo survived. Bruce Murray did not. In trying to keep JPL
planetary missions alive he had burned one
Washington bridge too many. - It's a real pleasure to be here. We at last have a Director. And it turns out he's
a pretty good Director as far as I'm concerned. A man I'm proud to call my
friend is Dr. Lew Allen. (people applauding) - [Narrator] Lew Allen was a
four-star Air Force general with a PhD in nuclear physics. His resume included stints as
deputy director of the CIA, director of the National Security Agency, director of the National
Reconnaissance Office, commander of Air Force Systems Command, and Air Force Chief of Staff. - My space experience in the Air Force was almost entirely associated with the National Reconnaissance Office. These reconnaissance missions
were of course different than planetary missions, but they weren't all that different. So coming to JPL was
not a tremendous shock in the sense that it was
a continuation really of the kind of work that I'd
been doing for many years. - [Narrator] Whereas Murray
had meant to shake things up, Allen's demeanor was calm and reassuring. - We who did not contribute
to those accomplishments, but who have admired the
work of this laboratory, envy you. And I consider it an honor
to be able to join you now. - [Narrator] But there were concerns about how Allen's military
background would be perceived, especially by Caltech,
which manages JPL for NASA. - They were extremely
self-conscious about the perception that they were bringing
in this military general just when the lab was going
to be ramping up defense work, and this perception that well now JPL was just becoming basically
a de facto military lab. - [Narrator] Caltech
President Marvin Goldberger instructed JPL to play down
his military background. He was also worried that the news media might view a general's arrival as signaling a dramatic change and NASA's capitulation to
the militarization of space. Goldberger declared there
was to be no forsaking the civilian space
emphasis for a military one or an open R&D facility
for a classified one. - So they worked hard to
counter that perception. One way they did that was
by referring to Lew Allen not as General Allen, but as Dr. Allen, because he did have a
PhD in nuclear physics. He did have scientific credentials. - [Narrator] Before Allen's arrival NASA's leadership had instructed JPL to take on work for the Pentagon and the lab had complied. One involved the Strategic
Defense Initiative. JPL's role was to find ways of tracking the path of incoming missiles that were to be destroyed by lasers. Another project was underway for the Army, an attempt to sort and
analyze for commanders fast-moving and complicated events taking place on the battlefield. - That situation was so
challenging to the Army that in some desperation they turned to JPL because they
believed we were good enough and tough enough to make
a breakthrough of sorts in this particular area. - [Narrator] But Dr. Allen's main interest was now space exploration. And early on, he announced that JPL would be actually
reducing military projects to no more than 20% of its workload. And he articulated a policy restricting the type of defense activities the lab would take on
and what it would avoid. - We should view the
defense work in this way, that the JPL role should be early, that we make our contributions on the front edge of technology and phase out then of the programs just as quickly as we can. - [Narrator] This policy
about military work coincided with a shift in Washington in favor of new planetary missions. Soon, Allen would have
the best of worries: more work than the lab knew how to handle. - So our problems quickly
shifted to the fact that we were outgrowing our facilities. (people applauding) So we tried different techniques for restricting the size of the workforce. None of them worked. (laughing) The people at JPL who
were out seeking the work were far too inventive to be influenced via a broad policy idea that one shouldn't grow. And so we continued to grow. - [Narrator] Earth science
had been one growth area. Another was astronomy. The lab had played a vital role in the first infrared
space telescope mission. And now, JPL was busy
building the workhorse camera for the much anticipated
Hubble Space Telescope. A radar mission to Venus was underway. So was an orbiter to circle Mars. There was even good news about Galileo. It was being packed up and shipped by truck convoy
across the country to Florida. The spacecraft's next scheduled
stop was the launch pad. Then, it would finally
be on its way to Jupiter. But as Galileo made its way to the Cape another spacecraft
already far beyond Jupiter was about to make history. (vehicles whirring) (deliberative orchestral music) After triumphs at Jupiter and Saturn Voyager 2 was closing in
on the first encounter ever with the ice giant planet Uranus. Voyager's journey to this point
had taken over eight years. And the wear and tear of a billion miles was beginning to show. The scan platform that
moved Voyager's camera was prone to seizing up. Transmitting instructions
to the spacecraft was an elaborate chore as the primary receiver
was no longer functioning and the backup was only partially working. Getting a signal back from
Voyager was a challenge, too. One-way transmission time
now took three hours. - The extension of the
mission to Uranus and Neptune I think highlights really one
of the unsung heroes of JPL and that was the Deep Space Network. - [Narrator] The Deep Space
Network is a group of antennas arrayed in three strategic
locations around the globe. This is the essential link
for tracking and communicating with all of NASA's
interplanetary spacecraft. - Those encounters at Uranus and Neptune would have been impossible without what the Deep Space Network, the DSN, did to get that data back. When you think about it, you've got the Voyager radio transmitter powered at about 23 watts, which is about the power of
your refrigerator light bulb. And we're trying to pick up
that signal here on Earth from well over a billion miles away. And picking out that
very tiny little signal from that vast background of outer space is really a remarkable achievement,
when you think about it. - [Narrator] Plotting Voyager's encounter was another challenge. That was because compared
to the rest of the planets, Uranus is flipped on its side, caused perhaps by a
gigantic collision long ago. - Uranus was a real planning challenge. And the reason why is
one, we only get one shot; and two, Uranus is kind
of turned up on its edge. And we're now instead of seeing
the moons in kind of a plane where you can fly through this plane and get one after the other, we're looking at a bullseye. - [Narrator] That meant
that the flyby of Uranus and its moons and rings would
occur nearly simultaneously. Coping with so much to see in
such a short period of time would make this the most intense of all the Voyager encounters. - You're given this pulse
of data no one's ever seen. And you get it all at once. You get high resolution. It comes up very, very quickly because these moons are small and you're flying by it at large velocity. So in a blink of an eye basically you go from a
very low resolution image to in your face high resolution, and then gone again. - You're gonna go by every
satellite in the same hour. It presented kind of an extreme version of the scientific competition
between different targets. Everybody wanted to look
in different directions. - [Narrator] As he had
done at Jupiter and Saturn Project Scientist Ed Stone
listened to the arguments, sought consensus, and then made decisions. - I would take a poll. But it was not literally a vote in a sense because I didn't feel that the science should
be decided by vote. It really had to be decided on its value. And that had to be something that ultimately the group understood. In some cases, I had to make
a decision where in fact it was really weighing
two different objectives. And it was a judgment call. - [Narrator] The biggest worry was whether anything could be seen at all. Anyone who has ever used a camera knows that taking a picture in focus requires a steady hand and ample light. Voyager was moving at over
30,000 miles per hour. And sunlight at Uranus is 400
times fainter than at Earth. - One half of Uranus in fact,
was not even in sunlight. The initial calculation showed that we were going to be in great danger of getting really fuzzy pictures of practically everything
if we didn't do something. And so we actually did some
re-engineering on the spacecraft with the help of the engineering teams. (people chattering) - It ended at 0623. - We called it our anti-smear campaign. We basically improved our
camera platform in flight by remotely changing how we operated it. - [Narrator] Scientists could
also thank the navigators for their astounding precision. Voyager would arrive just a single minute off the predicted schedule, a schedule calculated five years before. Now came the mad rush to squeeze close to 100
measurements into just a few hours. - Off. (faint speaking) is off. There are no temperatures in alarm. All items are as expected. Temperature (faint speaking). - We were bringing our
sleeping bags to our offices and sleeping overnight
so that we could be there and not miss any of the great discoveries that were occurring on a regular basis. Even though we couldn't
predict what they were, we knew that there were going
to be some great surprises. (intense ambient music) - [Narrator] The initial surprise though was the lack of a surprise. - We thought we'd see bands
and other colorful things like we had seen at Jupiter and Saturn. And Uranus presented to us a blank face. - [Narrator] That first
impression was deceiving. Uranus turned out to be the coldest planet in the solar system. Here, winds blow more than twice the speed of hurricanes on earth. Another surprise was the
planet's magnetic field. The poles here reside near the equator, twisting and turning like a corkscrew. And to everyone's delight two new narrow rings and 10
tiny new moons were discovered. The biggest surprise though
was the tiny moon Miranda. - Larry, I've heard you refer to this as probably the most exotic
body in the solar system. - Well, I think exotic
is an understatement. Miranda surpassed our
wildest expectations. No one possibly imagined what
we were going to find here. - Miranda just looked incredible. The amount of detailed structure, it looked like someone had just maybe like a clay or something, sort of squeezed on it and given it all these
different shapes and patterns. - Miranda was another one of
these weird jigsaw puzzles of two or three different types of terrain that looked like you just
painted them on the surface and then ripped apart the images and then put them together
in some haphazard way. - [Linda] It was clear that
something had happened. Some kind of activity had changed it from when it originally formed. - [Rich] It was probably hit
with something very large, which actually disrupted
it, broke it apart. So you now have a big chunk of
rock and a big chunk of ice. And these big chunks came together, which created these peculiar terrains. - [Narrator] This first
ever visit to Uranus provided a bounty of discoveries. And NASA saw the encounter
as an excellent backdrop to underscore to the press that 1986 was the agency's
year of space science. - Thanks, Jim. It's been a real pleasure
and a thrill for me as I'm sure it's been for all of you. It's been a brilliant
scientific achievement. - [Narrator] But the plan backfired. These reporters were almost to a person unabashed supporters of
exploring the planets. And the answer to one question had the effect of waving a red flag in front of a herd of disgruntled bulls. - This is pretty much the
whole ball game, isn't it? None of us in this room are
ever going to see anything else of any real consequence coming
back from Uranus, are we? - As I just mentioned, it is very likely that there will not be
another mission to Uranus for a couple of centuries. And so this is it. - To what extent is the
fact that the United States does not have its own Halley mission a loss of face or a step backwards in terms of keeping the United States preeminent in space technology? - What follow up plans you
have for the follow up stars? - I'm a kind of having a hard
time reconciling all this to know what the next generation's going to be doing in space. - What assurance can you really offer that the United States
is going to continue to pursue planetary science and that when we see
international missions, it won't be international
without the United States? - [Male Speaker] Final question, Kelly Beatty, Sky and Telescope. - Dr. Edelson did a meeting of planetary scientists in October. Dr. Allen stated that planetary science does not seem to be highly
regarded within NASA. Would you like to comment on that please? (laughing) - [Lew] Dr. Edelson? - Gosh, I didn't make that statement. - [Male Speaker] I don't think so, sir. - Maybe you oughta ask Dr.
Allen to comment on it. - [Male Speaker] I didn't
write it down. (laughing) - We do need to continue
planetary exploration. There are things which are
terribly important left to do. And it should compete
in scientific importance with other important things such as the great observatories. - And ladies and gentlemen,
our time is fleeting. Thank you very much,
Dr. Edelson, Dr. Allen. We'd like to remind you
that at 10 o'clock-- - [Narrator] The rush to get
off the stage was telling. Expectations were far
greater than funding. And in contrast to Voyager the Shuttle program was not
living up to its billing. Access to space had not become routine, cheaper, or safer. Two days after the
Voyager press conference scientists at JPL paused
to watch the launch of the next Shuttle flight. - We were meeting in our daily
science discussion meeting and we'd had them through the weekends during that time period. And we had just finished discussing what we were going to talk about in the press conference that day. And it was time for the launch
of the Challenger Shuttle. And so we had the television
set there in the room and we broke our meeting up
just in time to watch that. - [Male Speaker] T minus
10, nine, eight, seven, six. We have main engine start. Four, three, two, one. And lift off. Lift off of the 25th
Space Shuttle mission. And it has cleared the tower. (faint radio chatter) - And we were pleased that
it got off the ground. And then suddenly, we
saw this bright flash and trails of material going
in different directions. And it slowly dawned on us that the Challenger had
actually blown apart. - [Male Speaker] Flight controllers here looking very
carefully at the situation. Obviously, a major malfunction. - [Ellis] It was a tremendous shock. - [Male Speaker] We have no downlink. - We had two TV monitors up; one that was streaming the
pictures of Uranus coming back and the second with the
repeats of the explosions at the Challenger. So hard to watch those. Success... tremendous success with Voyager versus the heartbreak of what
happened with Challenger. (somber ambient music) - [Narrator] The loss of
Challenger and its crew of seven was a major shock to the nation and an enormous setback for NASA. All Shuttle flights were grounded. With no Shuttle and no
available expendable rockets there was no doorway into
space for the United States. Galileo was wrapped up and
transported back to Pasadena. Other missions to Venus, Saturn, and Mars were placed on hold. - All of you recall, I'm sure, that 1986 was to be the
year of space science. It began magnificently with
Voyager's encounter with Uranus. But of course the year of space science was
brought to a tragic conclusion when the Challenger accident
occurred so early in the year. We are overall looking at a
substantial period of stand down in the achievement of
space science information from the exploration of the solar system. Satellite programs will
have to go into storage for a substantial period of time. (door thudding) (somber orchestral music) - [Narrator] As NASA's Shuttle program worked to recover from
the loss of Challenger, Voyager 2 continued on its journey and final planetary encounter. (people chattering) - Three, two, one. Just about a million miles left to travel for the robot Voyager spacecraft to the last planet in the solar system, its close approach to Neptune. Scientists are eagerly awaiting the closeup pictures of
Neptune and its moon Triton. And Project Scientist Ed Stone says they'll be looking
for more moons too. - Neptune, 30 times as far
from the Sun as the Earth, very cold, very remote
edge of the solar system. - [Narrator] Neptune is so far away that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. It was discovered only through
mathematical calculations. This was the best
telescope image of Neptune before Voyager 2. - It's very, very dark at Neptune. We knew that there were rings at Neptune. The rings themselves were
half the brightness of soot. Seen against a jet black background with sunlight which is 1,000 times dimmer than it is on Earth. So you've got everything
going against you. - [Narrator] Once again Voyager had to be
retooled by remote control to have any hope of
getting back usable images. - If the spacecraft is
doing what it normally does, which is to slowly weave, bob around it, it rotates around like this, you're just gonna smear everything. - And so we had to go into
the attitude control system and come up with very
clever software changes to allow the spacecraft
to stay very stable. - [Narrator] More advances in
data compression were needed. A global array of antennas
had to be lashed together and Voyager itself was
requiring attention. - The spacecraft has
encountered its problems. It's a deaf in one ear essentially, one of the receivers. It's tone deaf in the other ear. It's got an arthritic scan platform. It's hung up on us several times. It's got memory lapses. It's got other, you know, the kinds of things you can associate with degradation, with age. But nevertheless, it's got a personality and it's also got a brain. - [Narrator] And that
brain had already noted a massive swirling storm, previously unknown moons and ring arcs. These were early signs that Neptune would not be a bland world. - It was kind of an amazing encounter. I'm still not exactly
sure why it happened, but it was a huge public affairs success. - [Narrator] With each encounter Voyager became better known. And scientists and engineers
were more media savvy. Some were even doubling
up as news anchors. - We'll do the opening.
- Yeah. - We come to you.
- Right. - You say a few words. We say let's have examples
of star occultations. - The Neptune encounter. I got to be the host of the PBS show called Neptune All Night. It was four hours of sitting there in front of the TV monitor for people who wanted to stay up all night for the encounter. - Three, two, one. Roll the opening. - Opening rolling. - [Narrator] Another anchor was a young engineer named Suzanne Dodd. - With us this morning,
we have Dr. Jay Holberg. I just got asked. I think JPL was looking
for a young female engineer who knew something about
the Voyager project and what Voyager was gonna do. - [Narrator] Dodd joined the Voyager team right out of college. She had moved up the ranks and was now responsible for the commands that would have Voyager executing a daredevil fly by of Neptune. - I thought, okay, my career
is kinda riding on this one 'cause I built the
closest approach sequence. And if it goes wrong,
it could be my fault. - [Narrator] A sense
of drama was everywhere and journalists and writers
from all over the world were converging to be a part
of what was being called the last picture show. - It was like a reunion. I mean, they came out here and they melded with the scientists. The scientists had a great time. They got a lot of good press coverage. It was a festival. - [Narrator] And at
times, a feeding frenzy. No one knew that better than a Dutch-born, sleep deprived JPLer named
Jurrie van der Woude. It was his job to provide
the always on deadline press with the latest images that were coming quite
literally off the printing press in this era before the internet. - In those days as soon as they saw you come in with the boxes with photographs was everybody had a deadline. And it was exactly 15 seconds
from the moment they saw you. Okay. Just before you leave here, come by, and I will get you a bunch
of photographs to take home. All right? - Thank you.
- Fantastic. Then I had to turn around, go to the photo lab, and see what was coming in
as far as data is concerned, see how it was processed. Then have 600 to 800 of those individual photographs printed, of each stacks of photographs that high. That had to happen through the night. But I had to stay there
to get captions written, and printed, and glued on the
back of each of the prints. Three weeks, I saw no bed. But boy, I wouldn't have
missed a second of those days. There's no way you can describe, or I cannot, the feeling when you look at
a planet for the first time in the history of our species. Nobody else has seen it. - It's kinda interesting. Beautiful pictures frequently are the ones that also have a lot of
scientific content in them. (laughing) - We've been in the
observatory phase for months, seeing Neptune as slowly
growing from a dot to something filling the
television screen and more. Neptune itself is a
beautiful austere blue world. We are looking at a
world of clouds and gas. The surface, if any, is far below. We have no idea what's deep down there. (people exclaiming)
(people applauding) - And at close encounter we would all be in von
Karman holding our breaths. And you'd get these incredible pictures which nobody had ever seen before. And you'd sit there and
you'd say, oh my god! You can't believe how exciting that was. - [Narrator] As Neptune's dark spot the size of the Earth
came more into focus, other features became apparent too. Just below the dark spot was
a group of streaking clouds circling Neptune so fast
they were named Scooter. Here winds blow over 1,200 miles per hour, the fastest in the solar system. Voyager was moving fast
too and flying low, skimming just above the
cloud tops of Neptune. (intense ambient music) Then the gravitational force of the planet bent the spacecraft downwards
towards the final fly by. Scientists who were accustomed
to extraordinary sights were still amazed by what they
saw at Neptune's moon Triton. - Last night was certainly
a night to be remembered. I think it's the most exciting night that I can remember from
any of the encounters that we've had with Voyager, and there have been some exciting nights. Without a question the images that were returned this morning revealed a world unlike any
of the others that we've seen. - It seemed like a lot of these flybys often happened in the middle of the night or early morning hours. It seemed like that and
Triton was one of those. (people chattering) - Well, it's like all of those things. Voyager put all the things
that seemed before as strange and put it in one place again. - I think for me, one of the highlights, to see those early pictures come back and people pointing at
the screen and saying, what do you think that means or what do you think is going on? - [Ed] What is it? - It's a crocodile of the solar system. (laughing) - Beautiful. - Oh, there are craters there. - [Narrator] What Voyager saw was a frigid world of rock and ice. - And it also had a very thin atmosphere. And the atmosphere had these
cloud structures in it, these very, very thin narrow clouds. You guys see a limb haze? I think that's a wind streak. - [Brad] Oh, they are wind streaks. No question about it. - How can you have a wind streak with such a tenuous atmosphere though? - You get the winds to blow. - To follow the migrations? You had to blow very hard. - If you get the winds blow fast enough. - Yeah, but did you calculate
how fast it's gotta blow in a (faint speaking) atmosphere? - Obviously, it knows how fast to blow because it's certainly
streaking that material out. - Triton had a very,
very peculiar surface. Very few craters. Very odd, chaotic looking terrain. Very disturbed. There are areas that look
very resurfaced, right? I mean, craterless. - [Narrator] Here perhaps
is the most diverse terrain in the entire solar system. Triton's surface has few craters, which suggests that
unlike the moon itself, the surface is for some
reason relatively young. A smudge on one of Voyager's images so small as to almost go unnoticed provided a clue as to why. - We saw these vents of things. And the thing is only like 20
degrees above absolute zero. I mean, it's one of the
coldest things there is. And it's got things erupting on it. - [Narrator] And though
these smudges were faint the implications were spectacular. (intense ambient music) These were erupting geysers shooting out material miles into space. (intense rumbling) In other places, there were
lava-like flows of ice, all of it believed caused
by volcanic processes underneath Triton's surface. - A world at the very, very
edge of the solar system. Frozen. We thought it would be
completely geologically dead. And it turns out to be
geologically active. That was a great surprise. - I think we were all just
overwhelmed with the experience that it had been. I mean this, for everybody,
I think, on the Voyager team had been the journey of a lifetime. There's no doubt that
the wealth of discovery from this mission had never been matched by any other mission. Voyager discovered the
diversity of the solar system which really told us that
the solar system is alive. The objects in the solar
system have evolved and are continuing to evolve. And I think for a science team that was a unique experience which will be the highlight
for many of the careers of the Voyager scientists. - I think we should just
have a show of hands who's here from that 1972 imaging team? (people laughing)
One! - I think it was very sad for some of the people on the project who had been there for all four encounters and really had had their whole life revolve around these four encounters. They had their plan their children in between encounters. And you know, you could watch your family
grow by the different years. - Here's to Kennedy. We couldn't have done it without her! (people cheering) - So not only are you sort of done with the science aspect of the mission, but you're really losing
your friends and your family as they go out and start
working on other projects. - If I really think about what's happened in the last few days, it's intellectually perhaps one of the most
stimulating times in my life. Emotionally, it's one of the saddest. I've been here... For the last 10 years I've worked on this mission, always anticipated one
encounter after the next, realizing they'd be fantastic, realizing that there'd be
things totally unexpected. And it's over. We've done it. We've finished the first reconnaissance of the entire solar system. We've rewritten the textbooks. What do you do next, you know? - [Narrator] The adventures
of the Voyagers were not over. In 1990, Voyager 1, over three and a half billion
miles away from its home, snapped these images. This first ever family
portrait of the solar system was the idea of scientist Carl Sagan. - [Child] Hello from the
children of planet Earth. - Sagan also led the team that designed Voyager's Golden Record. It is a greeting card containing sights and
sounds of our planet, should one day somewhere
in interstellar space a wayfarer were to stumble
upon the spacecraft and wonder who had sent
it on its adventure. A member of the record team and later Sagan's wife was Ann Druyan. Together, they wrote
this excerpted passage about our pale blue dot. (soft piano music) - Consider again that dot. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love. Everyone you know. Everyone you ever heard of. Every human being who ever
was lived out their lives. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help
will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. For the moment, the Earth
is where we make our stand. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and
cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. (people applauding) (upbeat rock music) - [Narrator] At the end of the encounter at Neptune and Triton a celebration organized by Carl Sagan and the Planetary Society
was held on JPL's mall. The evening featured a surprise appearance by rock and roll great Chuck Berry. It was a fitting choice as Berry's music was now sailing outward toward the stars aboard Voyager's Golden Record. That was only one of many
reasons to celebrate. The Shuttle was flying again. Three months before the Neptune encounter the Shuttle Atlantis had
deployed JPL's Magellan. This spacecraft used radar to map the surface of Venus in 3D. It was a natural follow-on
to the pioneering experiments JPL had flown on the
Shuttle's early flights. Five months after Magellan's deployment Galileo was also deployed and
sent on its way to Jupiter. Magellan and Galileo were two of only three planetary spacecraft ever carried aloft by the Shuttle. Lew Allen retired in 1991. He used this skit to help say his goodbye, riding off into the sunset with his wife. Allen died in 2010. Ed Stone became the new sheriff in town. Even while serving as
JPL's director for a decade he continued on as
Voyager's chief scientist. In 2013, Stone, still the only chief scientist
Voyager has ever had, announced that Voyager 1 had
reached interstellar space, the region between the stars. This historic event happened during the watch of Voyager's
10th project manager Suzanne Dodd. All this was still ahead. But on this evening of
the Neptune celebration before Chuck Berry struck
the first note on his guitar, Carl Sagan addressed the assembled crowd with words that are as fitting
today as they were in 1989. - [Carl] Every human culture
has rites of passage. They mark the transition from
one stage of life to another. We are gathered here to celebrate Voyager's right of passage. A machine designed, built,
and operated right here at JPL has broken free of the Sun's gravity, explored most of the
worlds of the solar system, and is now on its way to the great dark ocean
of interstellar space. The men and women responsible
are gathered here. They are heroes of human accomplishment. Their deeds will be remembered
in the history books. Our remote descendants may live on some of the worlds first
revealed to us by Voyager. If so, those descendants
will look back upon us as we look on Christopher Columbus. Voyager reminds us of the rarity and preciousness of what our planet holds, of our responsibility to
preserve life on Earth. If we are capable of such grand, long-term, benign, visionary, high technology endeavors as Voyager, can we not use our technological gifts and long-term vision to
put this planet right? To take care of one another, to cherish the Earth, and bravely, to venture forth
in the footsteps of Voyager to the planets and the stars. (upbeat rock music)
(people cheering)
