Page 57 - Astronomy - October 2017 USA

MISSION

by Shannon Stirone

of trying to home in on the best way to Candy Hansen at Sagan’s
communicate with alien species. request, no doubt changed
Since the 1970s, the symbolism of the the world and how we saw © JOSSDIM | DREAMSTIME.COM
record has shown up in TV shows, film, ourselves. As one of its final
and even clothing. The record even images, Voyager 1 pointed its
recently became popular again when a cameras toward Earth and snapped
Kickstarter campaign to reissue the full one final shot before the cameras were
Golden Record set received over $1 million shut down to save power.
in funding from 10,000 people wanting Sagan would later say the dot repre-
their own copy of history. sented the human experience: “Look again grand vision of humans wandering from
at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s the cradle of our planet into the wider
us. On it everyone you love, everyone you expanse of our solar system and, eventually,
know, everyone you ever heard of, every the universe.
While working on the Voyager mission, human being who ever was, lived out their The closest thing to the Voyager mission
Sagan and Druyan created a TV show lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffer- in the modern age may be the New
called Cosmos. The PBS show, which ing, thousands of confident religions, ide- Horizons flyby of Pluto. Today, we can
debuted in 1980, not only highlighted the ologies, and economic doctrines, every search every major body in the solar system
beautiful intricacies of Earth, but it gave hunter and forager, every hero and coward, online and find an image of that object, but
viewers a perspective about our place in the every creator and destroyer of civilization, it wasn’t always that way. In 2015, the previ-
cosmos, coinciding with the mission’s jour- every king and peasant, every young couple ously blurry dot we called Pluto became
ney toward Saturn. (Sagan and Druyan met in love, every mother and father, hopeful crisp with color, geological features and
while working on the Golden Record and child, inventor and explorer, every teacher even a heart-shaped glacier, as the space-
married in 1981.) of morals, every corrupt politician, every craft undertook a six-month reconnaissance
The impact of the show on popular cul- superstar, every supreme leader, every saint of the distant planet and its moons. Like the
ture is so great, it’s hard to quantify, though and sinner in the history of our species Voyagers, New Horizons’ discoveries help
one benefit is that Cosmos ultimately lived there — on a mote of dust suspended us understand Earth’s place in the cosmos.
inspired an entire generation of scien- in a sunbeam.” “For the first time, we have the power to
tists. Jim Bell, a planetary scientist at As photos of Earth taken from space decide the fate of our planet and ourselves.
Arizona State University who worked had done in the 1960s, the Pale Blue Dot This is a time of great danger, but our spe-
on Voyager at the beginning of his career put humanity’s place in perspective. We cies is young and curious and brave. It
and would ultimately memorialize the mis- weren’t just one species uniting for our shows much promise,” Sagan says in the
sion in the oral history book The Interstellar planet — we also weren’t the rulers of the first episode of the original Cosmos. “In the
Age, credits Cosmos with inspiring his universe, but rather an “insignificant planet last few millennia, we have made the most
career path. of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked astonishing and unexpected discoveries
“Voyager launched back when I was in away in some forgotten corner of a universe about the cosmos and our place within it.”
high school, and the show Cosmos by Carl in which there are far more galaxies than Thanks to the Voyagers and our contin-
Sagan was enormously impactful,” he says. people,” Sagan says. ued exploration of the solar system, this
“It was the first time that science was on TV “To my mind, there is perhaps no better statement still rings true. We know more
and being communicated by a real profes- demonstration of the folly of human about our place in space and can imagine
sional communicator who could speak the conceits than this distant image of our other civilizations having an encounter
language of science and translate it.” tiny world,” Sagan says in Cosmos. “To with an artifact of humanity. Sometime
me, it underscores our responsibility to deal around 2025, both Voyagers will go dor-
more kindly and compassionately with one mant. But they will always carry a cultural
another and to preserve and cherish that pale legacy that few robotic missions have before
Perhaps more than anything else though, blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” — or may ever again.
the biggest influence the Voyager mission The photo inspired Sagan’s book Pale
had on popular culture came in the form of Blue Dot, which, in turn, would go on to Shannon Stirone is a Bay Area freelance
a single photo. The “Pale Blue Dot,” taken inspire short films like Wanderers and tele- writer who covers NASA, space exploration,
February 14, 1990, by Carolyn Porco and vision shows like The Expanse with its and space policy.

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