Recommendations for books about 40 year old space probes

August 6, 2017 11:19 PM

After the recent wonderful NYT article on the ageing scientists and engineers of the two Voyagers, still silently transmitting from outside the heliosphere ( the Voyagers, not the engineers), I wonder whether I could get some recommendations on literature about the probes' journey and discoveries.
posted by fordiebianco to Science & Nature (5 answers total)

Best answer: The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell. It's not a perfect book -- the author doesn't do enough to describe the parts in the mission that he wasn't present for, he's way too interested in the Golden Record, and he occasionally talks to readers as if science is an entirely new thing to them. But there are some great passages about the big planetary flybys, problem-solving along the way, and the people who are running the mission today.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 6:11 AM on August 7, 2017

I don't have a book recommendation, but I happened to run across this article at Ars today which mentioned an upcoming documentary on PBS that might interest you:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/the-voyagers-have-reached-an-anniversary-worth-celebrating/
posted by Grither at 9:40 AM on August 7, 2017

The Voyager Neptune Travel Guide < - - 114MB PDF from Nasa's technical reports server.

The Voyager Neptune Travel Guide < - - paperback (used) from Amazon

Have a copy - it's a great geeky read. Full of orbit dynamics, science objectives and planning, layman level detail on the hardware.
posted by cfraenkel at 9:51 AM on August 7, 2017

The NASA History Office has a chapter on the Voyager program (and many other topics).
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:31 AM on August 7, 2017

Response by poster: Thank you all!

Will take those recommendations home with me.
posted by fordiebianco at 12:27 AM on August 9, 2017