Discovery

The team that created the Voyager hoped for it to go far beyond any other craft that humankind has made. It did achieve that goal, and now it is traveling beyond our solar system. The Voyager represents humankind’s curiosity about the universe as well as humankind’s capabilities. Our curiosity about our universe will not end, and space exploration helps answer many questions about the world we live in.

“There’s something so inspirational about going to space,” Erskine said. “Space exploration flourishes my imagination in a way that other subjects don’t.”

The Voyager and the prospect of discovery is an inspiration to future aerospace engineers. Without the Voyager, we would never know the information that we now know.

“Our knowledge has grown so much, and there’s still a lot we don’t know, but that’s the thing about knowledge,” Bloom said. “One of the things that learning helps you do is to understand how much that you don’t know. So, I mean, it’s been an adventure. For me, those probes have essentially been out there, almost my whole life.”

The Voyager probes are still traveling and they will continue to travel through space for many more years. As the aerospace industry grows with new minds, the achievements will bypass that of the Voyager’s. Humankind’s curiosity will always outrun our discovery, but we will continue to chase after answers to our questions.