Mind-blowing things we learned watching the new Voyager film The Farthest

The Voyager missions has made an incredible impact on our understanding of the Solar System, but also on the hearts and minds of the people involved in the mission. This is wonderfully expressed in the new movie The Farthest – here are some of the amazing things we discovered.

The Voyager space probes are still out there, sailing through the interstellar space between ourSolar Systemand our nearest stars, and although they are billions of kilometres away, they are still very close to our hearts and minds, especially for those involved in the mission. In the new documentary filmThe Farthest, the engineers, scientists and artists who helped develop the two probes and Golden Records discuss the incredible effort involved in getting the mission off the ground, the nail-biting tension when things went wrong and the emotional impactVoyager’s40-year journey has had.

The Farthestis out in selected cinemas today and we’ve had a chance to see the film - it’s well worth catching if you are a fan of space exploration, but before then, here are a few of the mind-boggling facts and thoughts we had whilst watching:

Space is big… really, really big!

The Farthest (2017) documentary trailer (TheFarthest Film/YouTube)

Arts and space crafts

The Golden Record (Image courtesy of Wildcard Distribution)

It’ll be alright on the night

Voyager passing Uranus (Image courtesy of Wildcard Distribution)

A Voyager of discovery

(Image courtesy of Wildcard Distribution)

These Voyager facts and figures are as captivating as they are incredible, but the real impact from the movie comes from the emotional stories told during the interviews with such visionaries as SETI founder Frank Drake, who developed the Golden Record with Carl Sagan, or to Sagan’s son Nick (whose voice appears on the Golden Record) about his father’s legacy. Seeing tears shed when the engineers who built the probes speak of seeing it launched, or the mission scientists when they think of switching Voyager’s instruments off shows the powerful effect the mission has had on tem, and the film really makes you feel like the Voyager probes are their family. For many it is a lifetime’s work andThe Farthestis a great watch to truly understand what this 40-year mission means, not only for the people who built it, but for humanity itself.

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