To Planets and Beyond: Voyager Celebrates 35 Years

WHAT: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., celebrates the 35th anniversary of the Voyager mission, whose twin spacecraft conducted a Grand Tour of the planets and are now headed into interstellar space.
A panel discussion in JPL’s von Karman auditorium will highlight insider stories about designing the planetary tour, Voyager’s post-launch “anxiety attack,” Voyager 2’s encounter with Neptune, and the Golden Record. Afterwards, an event on JPL’s mall area will feature a band playing a song from the Golden Record and remarks from the director of JPL, the Voyager project scientist, an astronaut and others.

WHO: Charles Elachi, JPL director; Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL; Ann Druyan, former creative director, Voyager Interstellar Message Project; Charley Kohlhase, former manager of Voyager’s mission planning office; Chris Jones, associate director for flight projects and mission success at JPL and former Voyager spacecraft team chief; Bob Cesarone, assistant program manager at JPL and former lead trajectory and maneuver engineer for the Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus and Neptune; Stephanie Wilson, astronaut and a former JPL engineer who worked on the Galileo mission to Jupiter; and other dignitaries.

WHEN: Panel discussion starts at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 5. Event on the mall starts at noon.

WHERE: JPL, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, Calif. Visitor parking is to the left (west) of the JPL main guard gate, across the street from the JPL Visitor Center.

Media must arrange for access into JPL in advance by contacting Jia-Rui Cook in the JPL Media Relations Office at jccook@jpl.nasa.gov or 818-354-5011 by 4 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, Sept. 4. Current, valid media credentials and photo I.D. are required. Non-U.S. citizens must also provide passports.

The panel discussion will also be streamed live on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2.