The Vivid Dispatches from Space That Made Me Want to Become a Scientist

Images From Historic Voyager 1 and 2 Missions Introduced Me to the Vastness of Space—and the Exciting Reality of Its Deep Exploration

I remember hearing about the launches of the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft on the evening news in 1977. I was 12 then, and in love with the dark skies and glittering stars that surrounded me in rural Rhode Island. The newscaster—probably John Chancellor since we were an NBC Nightly News household—talked about the Voyagers’ mission to explore the outer solar system and how Voyager 2 would reach its final planetary destination, Neptune, in 1989. That was the whole of my lifetime into the future—it gave me a …