‘Voyager told us what was out there’

Scientists reflect on mission on 40th anniversary

‘The Farthest: Voyager in Space’ When: 8 p.m. Wednesday Where: PBS

It’s been decades, but even now in his 80s, John Casani can still hear the advice his father whispered into his ear as a child: “It’s the trifles that make perfection. But perfection is no trifle.”

“And what he really meant, if you’re going to do something and you want it to work well and last a long time, you have to make sure that every piece of it is done right,” Casani says, tapping his pointer finger on the table in front of him for emphasis.

“Every.” Tap. “Piece.” Tap. “Done.” Tap. “Right.”

“You can’t afford to leave anything to chance,” he says. This is the motto Casani brought with him to work every day in the 1970s, when he served as the project manager of NASA’s Voyager mission. And his attention to detail has allowed spacecraft to reach farther limits than any other object in human history.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Voyager’s launch. To commemorate, Casani visited Space Center Houston earlier this month, along with his Voyager colleagues, for a screening of the new documentary “The Farthest: Voyager in Space,” which will

premiere at 8 p.m. Wednesday on PBS.

“It’s one of the great stories of human endeavor,” producer Jared Lipworth says. “And they didn’t think it would last 40 years. They hoped it would last four years — that’s one of the reasons they made two of them. You could lose one at launch, and no spacecraft at that point lasted very long.”

Casani and others built the twin spacecraft Voyager I and Voyager II over several years. And on Aug. 20, 1977, they launched Voyager II at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launching the second one ahead of the first caused some confusion. Though Voyager I didn’t see its liftoff until September of that year, its quicker speed meant that it soon overtook Voyager II and became the first of the pair to reach Jupiter.

After arriving at Jupiter, Voyager performed a slingshot — using the planet’s gravity to add speed to its path — and flew on to Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, exploring planets and moons. In 2012, it became the first man-made object to leave our solar system, entering interstellar space.

“When I stand back, I look at Voyager really as an amazing mission — not only because it lasted so long,” says Casani, who is one of about 20 Voyager alums interviewed in the film. “Because it really, for the first time, gave anybody on Earth a picture of what the solar system out beyond Mars was like. We had no idea.”

Before Voyager, Earthlings relied on telescope visuals to see things like Jupiter and its moons.

“Nobody had a clue what Jupiter’s moons — or even Jupiter — looked like,” he says. “And for Saturn and Neptune and Uranus, it was even worse. So Voyager told us what was out there.”

Originally, plans called for a craft that would gather images and other readings from these four planets, brought into a once-in-176-years planetary alignment that cut the mission’s timeline substantially. Interstellar space? That was just an added bonus NASA could enjoy if the mission went well through its initial phases.

“The fact that it lasts 40 years is just that it was built perfectly,” Casani says, with a winking tone, looking over his left shoulder at his colleague Frank Locatell, senior engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab from 1967-91. Locatell was a project engineer for mechanical systems the year before Voyager’s launch. “That’s where Frank and I came in.”

Casani and Locatell are both featured in the documentary. And though they’ve been colleagues and friends for more than four decades, they differ in their views of Voyager: Locatell speaks in sentimental superlatives about the spacecraft while Casani is more matter-of-fact. Locatell calls Voyager his child; Casani says it’s a hunk of silicon — albeit an important one.

“I think that Voyager represents an evolutionary step in human development. I don’t think that’s a stretch,” Locatell says. “Overwhelmingly, Voyager is a story about science, and about the application of science and what that application could mean to us in our development as human beings. It can also offer us some perspective, and the film actually does this, I believe. The film puts us in a kind of awareness beyond our galaxy. … It’s a broader perspective, for sure, and the hope is that the audiences seeing that film will be able to take a look at some of the considerations they’re making right here on Earth and maybe do a little better job of using that more universal perspective.” Casani jumps on that. “I have a particular view when you talk about perspective, and I think that’s one of the great contributions,” he says. “Someone was asking us, what would I hope the audience would take away from the film, and the science is something. And the golden record is something. But the perspective I’d like people to begin to share is the size of the universe in terms of spatial extent, which is measured by how long it takes a light wave to get from Earth to the other side of our galaxy, to the nextnearest galaxy, to the farthest galaxy. Those numbers are so incredible.”

It took Voyager I a year-anda-half to reach its first planet, Jupiter, in March 1979. The next planet, Saturn, came in November 1980. At that point, Voyager I spun off to explore Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, and began its trip out of the solar system. In 40 years, it has traveled nearly 13 billion miles.

But, to Casani’s point about spatial extent, it will take another 40,000 years to reach the nearest star.

Earth will stop being able to receive signals from the spacecraft long before then, and the instruments will be decommissioned one by one in time. Though, with luck, a well-built machine like Voyager could theoretically last long enough to reach another star.

“Don’t ever think it was luck,” Casani says of the Voyager project. “Being lucky is pretty close to being right.”

represents evolutionary‘Voyager an step in human development. I don’t think that’s a stretch. … The film puts us in a kind of awareness beyond our galaxy.’ Frank Locatell, senior engineer

Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle John Casani, left, project manager, and scientist Don Gurnett recall the Voyager project at Space Center Houston.

NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft launched atop the Titan/Centaur-6 on Sept. 5, 1977, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, shortly after Voyager II.

NASA | JPL-Caltech Engineers prepare NASA’s Voyager 2 in March 1977. “The fact that it lasts 40 years is just that it was built perfectly,” project manager John Casani says.

Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle “It’s one of the great stories of human endeavor,” says “The Farthest” producer Jared Lipworth.

NASA | JPL-Caltech file Engineers build an antenna for one of the Voyager spacecraft. Before Voyager, humans relied on telescopes to see Jupiter and its moons.

Associated Press file A NASA rendering depicts Voyager I nearing Saturn. In 1998, the spacecraft became the most distant man-made object in the universe.

Reuters A six-sided feature appears in one of the first clear images of Saturn’s north pole. It was taken during NASA’s Voyager flybys of the early ’80s.