JPL and the Space Age- The Footsteps of Voyager

While the legendary Voyager 2 was in the midst of its triumphant Grand Tour through the outer planets, the space shuttle era was underway on Earth. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory would be among the first to demonstrate how NASA’s new shuttle could be used to conduct science experiments about our own planet from the vantage of space. But for launching missions to targets beyond Earth orbit, the shuttle posed engineering challenges. One mission that launched from the shuttle was Galileo, JPL’s flagship mission to Jupiter, and its route to the launch pad would be full of unexpected twists and turns.

Drawing on rare film footage as well as the memories of the engineers and scientists who were there, “The Footsteps of Voyager” recounts the dramatic experiences of these first-ever encounters at Uranus and Neptune and the efforts to deploy Galileo, a mission that would become the first to orbit an outer planet.

Documentary length: 56 minutes