It has been THIRTY years since they were launched. THIRTY years. Amazing. And still going.
Wired News has a series of photos from the two Voyager spacecraft.
NASA has a listing of all missions (past, current, and future) and links to their websites.
Linkage:
NASA | NASA missions | current missions | Voyager I and II
Wikipedia | Voyager program | Voyager I | Voyager II
And of course, let’s not forget V’ger from the Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
In related news, 28 Jet Propulsion Lab scientists are suing to be excluded from the Department of Homeland Security’s background check as stipulated in “Directive 12“.
From Wired Science:
JPL Scientists Sue Federal Government and Caltech for NASA’s Background Checks
Over his four decades at the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dennis Byrnes worked on the Apollo 7 spacecraft, set the Galileo probe on a course to Jupiter and received a NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Award.But because Byrnes won’t let federal investigators snoop into intimate details of his personal life, he could lose his job.
Byrnes is one of 28 Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) senior scientists and engineers who today sued NASA, the Department of Commerce and CalTech over background checks required of all federal employees by the Department of Homeland Security.
“We’re talking about the best and brightest scientists in the world. We’re talking about jet propulsion, the Mars probe, the lunar landing, Galileo, the comet landing project,” said Dan Stormer of Hadsell & Stormer, the civil rights law firm representing the scientists. “And they’re being asked to give up their constitutional rights in order to keep their jobs.”
(snip)
Beyond the legal issues, the scientists say that the background checks will discourage researchers from working for NASA and are irrelevant to their jobs.
“I can fly a spacecraft to any planet in the galaxy, and I’m being judged by people who don’t have a clue as to my technical qualifications whether I’m suitable for government service,” said Byrnes.
He continued, “It’s already an extremely rigorous process when the labs hire someone. We check your degrees, whether you worked where you said you did. All that is normal and fine. This is something else. This is McCarthyism.”
(also note, as you visit the NASA websites, that since NASA is part of the U.S. gov’t, the images are considered public domain and therefor available for use.)