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English
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Paper 1 Non-fiction 202

Cambridge Lower Secondary Progression Test
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3139_01_INS_RP
© UCLES 2024

40 years and counting: the team behind Voyager's space odyssey

On a chilly March morning, Steve Howard, aged 65, is at work in his office in Altadena,
California. Two computer screens are squeezed on to his corner desk along with family ph
a box of paper tissues, and tins of peppermints. The office is in a quiet business park. Nex
is a diner, where people linger for hours over a $1 coffee. If the few people walking by on W
Woodbury Road were to peer into Howard's office, they might guess, seeing the graph-cov
twin screens and a third PC at the other end of the desk, that he was, perhaps, a financial
adviser. But what Steve Howard is actually doing makes this very ordinary scene quite
extraordinary.

Howard is a NASA1 mission controller. He is sending instructions to a probe in interstellar

space, billions of kilometres from Earth. The 815-kilogram craft, Voyager 1, is one of two
identical machines that for many years now have been the furthest human-made objects fr
Earth.

It is no hyperbole to say, then, that the man tapping away at his keyboard is a key figure in
greatest-ever feat of human exploration. There was nothing like the Voyager 1 and Voyage
g p g y g y g
from
Earth
a tinyalmost
Engineers
missions (described
point of
6.5
toare
thelight.
billion
notbygiven
outer the kilometres
astrophysicist
to emotion,
planets out.but
before ItCarl
they captured
the Sagan
romance
launched Neptune,
as
in aof thisUranus,
'pale
1977. bluemachines
dot')
Saturn,
incredible
The and have
voyagethe
Jupiter,
Sun,
of Venus
bytrav
the
discovery
been
by their own
at around 60 account, kept the
000 kilometres perageing mission
hour for over 40 team together.
years. Even latecomers,
The Voyagers' on-boardwho were
computer
school when Voyager was launched, have been working on
early 1970s models that were advanced then but are puny now - a smartphone's compute the same mission for 30 years
more.
some 200 000 times faster and has about 250 000 times more memory than Voyager's
hardware.
It is clear talking to Voyager staff that they genuinely love their spacecraft, even though mo
were too young
The Voyager to see originally
mission, them before theytoflew.
meant But as
last four engineers,
years, took thethey
crafthave mixed
initially feelingstha
to Jupiter,
the
Saturn, then, since everything was working well, to Uranus and finally Neptune, afterThis
most famous aspect of that romance, the 'golden record' that each craft carries. is
which
gold-covered
spun off into theircopper disk containing,
journey around the in groove
Milky Way.form,'We 115 photos
all knew wefrom
wereEarth, a selection
on a mission of of
natural sounds from surf to whales, music from a variety of cultures
discovery,' says Professor Ed Stone, aged 79. 'We just had no idea how much discovery t and eras and spoken
greetings
would be. in We 55just
languages.
kept finding things we didn't know were there to be found. For example,
before Voyager, the only known volcanoes in the solar system were here on Earth. Then w
Carl
flew bySagan, whomoon,
Jupiter's had the Io,initial
which idea
hadfor
10the record,
times wrote in activity
the volcanic the 1970s: 'The spacecraft
of Earth. Ten times! willWe
encountered
detected hot lakesand the of recording
lava on the played onlyThat
surface. if there
wasarethe advanced
first majorspacefaring
discovery and civilisations
it set the
for the rest of the mission.'

Against
© all expectations their vintage electronics
UCLES 2024 are still, mostly, working in the intense mi
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253 °C cold of outer space, but the on-board camera on each Voyager was deactivated to
power in 1990. This was after Voyager 1 took a now-iconic 'family portrait' of the solar syst

interstellar space.' Sagan's son Nick, then an infant, now a science-fiction novelist and
screenwriter, recorded the English message: 'Hello from the children of planet Earth.' But o
sure to bring people to tears is the message in Mandarin: 'Hope everyone's well. We are
thinking about you all. Please come here to visit when you have time.'

Project manager Suzy Dodd's view of the record is more typical of the team 'I'm of the opi
Project manager Suzy Dodd s view of the record is more typical of the team. I m of the opi
and
Glossary:
history.
1
that tins of peppermints
space emptyon their
thedesks, is surely one of the mostit amazing things
Butinthat
human
NASA: theisUS
very and
organisation that chances of something
is responsible for spacefinding are remote.
exploration does
diminish the fact that we've got a little time capsule out there travelling through space and
orbiting around in our galaxy. And that's us.'

For the most part, Voyager is the reality of space exploration - slow, patient science, humd
perhaps, but real. It's only a 20-minute drive from Altadena to Hollywood, where brilliant fa
versions of space exploration are confected, but Voyager, starring real people who keep ti

© UCLES 2024 E/S8/INSERT/01