Presentation Schedule
The Legacy of the Voyager Space Exploration Missions: 50 Years On (103123)
Session Chair: David Smith
Tuesday, 12 May 2026 10:45
Session: Session 1
Room: Room G407 (4F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
The year 2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of Voyagers 1 & 2 by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which explored the outer planets of our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—and 48 of their moons from 1979 to 1989 and continue to send information back to Earth today as they travel across interstellar space. Few studies about Voyager have been written by historians but it is an ideal subject for historical inquiry given that the project featured so many unique “firsts” and has powerfully influenced space exploration, science, technology and culture. Research for this qualitative historical study is based on: my interviews in 2020 with space scholar David W. Swift, author of Voyager Tales (1997); resources held at the JPL Archives; an analysis of 30 transcribed interviews of JPL personnel who were on the Voyager team; and the space files from the LBJ and Jimmy Carter presidential libraries. My analysis of the these records, including the oral accounts of scientists and engineers, reveal that: the Voyager mission’s amazing diversity of discoveries finally shook scientists and the public out of their “Earth-bound” views of the universe; the unprecedented autonomy of the two robots’ onboard computers offer insights into challenges with AI that we face today; and that, after five decades, the Voyagers remain as salient examples of how robotic space exploration carries key advantages over crewed missions in terms of the breadth of acquisition of scientific knowledge, cost, safety, and ethics.
Authors:
David Smith, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
About the Presenter(s)
Dr David Smith is a currently at University of Saskatchewan in Canada
See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule
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