The Interstellar Age Read Online Free Page A

had been visited before, though only briefly, during flybys by the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft a few years prior to Voyager . While spectacular achievements in many other ways, the Pioneer images of the giant planets were somewhat fuzzy (not much better than telescopic images from Earth, because of the relatively far flyby distances and crude digital imaging technology that was used), and little new information was obtained about the moons or rings around those worlds.
    Voyager was different.
    Van Gogh–like tapestries of crazily colored, swirly clouds with vibrant tones of orange, yellow, and red on Jupiter, including the first close-ups of the Great Red Spot, began showing up on TV, on space posters, and in textbooks. The clarity of form and color and the simple elegance of Saturn’s rings were revealed for the first time, including photos looking back from behind the rings, beyond Saturn, viewing the planet from a perspective impossible to achieve from Earth. And the large moons around Jupiter and Saturn were unveiled as alluring worlds—planets in their own right—one with active volcanoes (Io), another with plates of what appeared to be floating sea ice (Europa), and another with a thick, smoggy atmosphere that may be what the Earth’s early atmosphere was like (Titan). It was a grand spectacle.
    Voyager imaging team member Carl Sagan knew, from his own experience as a public speaker, educator, and TV host, that therewas enormous public support for NASA, but that it was scattered across the country and not organized in any particular way. Something had to be done to combat the looming budget cuts. Sagan, along with Bruce Murray, a planetary scientist and then director of JPL at Caltech in Pasadena, and JPL space mission engineer and manager Louis Friedman, decided to try to organize and focus public support. In 1980 they formed a nonprofit membership organization, a society that any like-minded people could join. Dues would be $15 per year, and they’d send out a bimonthly magazine with the latest space images and other related information. They called it The Planetary Society, and the magazine The Planetary Report.
    I joined The Planetary Society as a high school student in 1980 (I think I saw the ads for membership in the materials distributed by my rural Rhode Island amateur astronomy club, SkyScrapers). Many members of the club were as excited as I was about the Cosmos TV show and thrilled about being part of a nationwide—worldwide—effort to promote space exploration. I let my membership lapse a few times in college when I was short on cash, joined again for good in grad school, and now I’m privileged to be the president of the society’s board of directors, a position once held by my mentor, Carl Sagan. Membership in the society skyrocketed to more than 100,000 people shortly after it was formed, partly fueled by Sagan’s enormous popularity and influence, but partly also because it provided a way for interested people to stay informed about and connected with the space program in the days before the Internet. Sagan, Murray, and Friedman took this public support to Congress and the presidential administrations over the years to help demonstrate the high level of enthusiasm for NASA and space exploration. Indeed, the society was instrumental in tapping into the success and legacyof Voyager to help avert the worst of the early 1980s budget slashing of NASA and to help set the stage for the phenomenal missions of exploration and discovery that have taken place since.
    Today, thirty-five years after it was founded, more than a half million people have been members of The Planetary Society, and millions more enjoy the images, activities, articles, blogs, and tweets on our website for free (planetary.org). And once again we find ourselves in austere times, where shortsighted members of our government are again looking to slash and burn federal budgets for nondiscretionary programs like NASA. So once