posted 09-16-2010 04:28 AM               

The Voyager Mission Updates

I've got a treasure for you readers. We take for granted now the ability to get detailed mission updates in a timely fashion via the Web. Many space missions have websites with regular -- weekly or monthly or so -- science and engineering updates giving the status of spacecraft and their science missions, with information on both the good and the bad, the exciting and the mundane. (Check out, for example, the rovers, Cassini, Deep Impact, and IKAROS.) How did people get their mission status before the Web? Through printed newsletters, of course. And it's a sad fact that these documents are mostly not available online; in fact, I doubt they're available in many libraries.

So it's wonderful that there are space enthusiast pack rats out there who saved this stuff for decades. And it's even more wonderful that these pack rats have scanners and free time. One such space fan, Tom Faber, sent me an email out of the blue a few weeks ago saying, "I have a set of the Voyager Mission Status Bulletins that JPL published from 1977-1990. I have scanned these and made PDFs of them. I've looked for these on the net and haven't found them posted anywhere so I would like to make them available. Can you suggest who might put these on line?" Can I suggest anybody? How about me?!!

So here you go -- the Voyager Mission Status Bulletins