I've been a self-proclaimed "spaceophile" for many years, though my interest was rekindled in the mid 1990s by the film Apollo 13 and gained root with From the Earth to the Moon on HBO.
I like to call July 20 Moon Day, because it is the date on which we first set foot there. Less well known, however, are the adventures of the Voyager probes. And now we are celebrating thirty years since their launch. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Voyager 2's launch, and its sister ship, Voyager 1, was launched just a couple weeks before that on August 20, 1977.
Both are now past the heliosphere, still sending messages and data all these years later. I believe there will be stories to tell about these ships to the generations that have been born since.
Of course, several films have already used the Voyager ships to lead into tales -- the first Star Trek movie and Carl Sagan's Contact to name just a couple -- so I'm not venturing too far afield when I say that, but I believe there's more out there. Whether I tell those tales or not, I don't know, but it's comforting to know that there's knowledge to be gained beyond our solar system. Happy Anniversary, Voyager.
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