Robotic Exploration
COLLECTION
Robotic ExplorationCOLLECTION

Browse by mission, era, or program
Voyager

The machine behind the mission

Voyager

  • Launched 1977
  • 4 giant planets visited
  • Still calling home

Two probes launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977 toured Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — and they're still sending signals home from interstellar space, nearly 50 years later.

Shop the Robotic Exploration shirts

THE MACHINES GO FIRST

Since Mariner 2 passed Venus in 1962, robots have been our scouts — first past every planet, first wheels on Mars. Voyager still calls home from interstellar space.

OUTLIVING THE WARRANTY

Rovers that drive until the dust wins; a five-flight helicopter that flew seventy-two. Our Robotic Exploration collection honors machines that outlive their warranties by decades.

SHOP Robotic Exploration Programs COLLECTION

SHOWING 6 OUT OF 6 PRODUCTS
Viking and Voyager press kits - 1975 / 1977

Robotic exploration, by the numbers

Fig 3VIKING - NASA 75-183
Viking lander descent
2.4 M/STOUCHDOWN - 20 JUL 1976

Three hours down from orbit, the last of it on a 16-meter parachute and three engines, to land at walking pace.

Viking lander descent

Distance - Voyager 1
15 BILLION MI
Still transmitting
LAUNCHED 5 SEP 1977
JPL - PASADENA
Fig 7VOYAGER - NASA 77-136
Radioisotope thermoelectric generator
87.7 YRSPU-238 HALF-LIFE
3 per spacecraft - 470 W

No moving parts. Plutonium gets hot on its own, which is why Voyager is still talking to us.

Radioisotope thermoelectric generator

10 monthscruise to Mars
Viking 1
3 hrs 10orbit to touchdown
Chryse Planitia
72 flightsIngenuity
built for 5
VIKING - ENTRY DATA
Checked - A. Redstone
Brush Mark 200 - 25 mm/minE+00:00 - E+03:10CH 2 - ALTITUDE - CH 6 - DESCENT RATE
DID YOU KNOW?
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

DEEP SPACE NETWORK SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

MARINER - SURVEYOR - VIKING - VOYAGER - THE MARS ROVERS
FINAL - 1962 TO PRESENT

No one aboard, so every command is written down in advance and radioed from one of three dishes on three continents. This is the sequence of events for sixty years of machines that went where people could not.

PREPARED BY
MISSION OPERATIONS
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
REPRINTED FOR CAPE KENNEDY CLOTHING
Artie RedstoneMission Director
Max QDSN Operations Chief
Turn the page →
JPL

FIG 1VIKING SPACE VEHICLE CONFIGURATION

DSN
VIKING SPACE VEHICLE CONFIGURATION
Tap the drawing to enlarge

Titan IIIE with a Centaur on top: 160 feet of launch vehicle for a spacecraft that weighed about 7,800 pounds fueled. Two solid motors lit first, the Titan core took over, and the Centaur burned hydrogen and oxygen to push Viking out of Earth orbit. Viking 1 left on August 20, 1975; Viking 2 on September 9.

  1. 1Solid rocket motors - stage zero, two 120-inch five-segment solids that did the lifting off the pad.
  2. 2Titan core - stages one and two, storable propellants that light on contact.
  3. 3Centaur D-1T - liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, restartable, the stage that aimed Viking at Mars.
  4. 4Nose fairing - the Viking orbiter and lander rode inside, the lander sealed in its bioshield.
Launch Vehicle
Height48.8 m (160 ft)
VehicleTitan IIIE / Centaur
Viking 1 launch20 Aug 1975
Viking 2 launch9 Sep 1975
Cruise to Marsabout 10 months
Spacecraft massapprox 3,530 kg

Source: NASA Viking press kits, 1975 and 1976 (NASA Release 75-183 and 76-182).

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeL-0
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-5
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

DID YOU KNOW?SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

DSN

Nuclear Heartbeat

Curiosity and Perseverance run on plutonium power — no sunlight required, day or night, dust storm or clear skies.

Plutonium, not sunlight

The 20-Minute Problem

Radio commands can take 20 minutes to reach Mars — so the rovers spot hazards and steer around them on their own.

Light time to Mars at its farthest

Greetings Aboard

Voyager's Golden Record carries music and greetings in 55 languages — addressed to whoever finds it out there.

Two copies, one on each Voyager
MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
Time
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-1
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

FIG 2SPACECRAFT CONFIGURATION IN CRUISE MODE

DSN
SPACECRAFT CONFIGURATION IN CRUISE MODE
Tap the drawing to enlarge

The orbiter carried the lander to Mars, photographed the landing sites before letting it go, and then stayed in orbit as the relay. Four solar panels made about 620 watts at Mars. The propulsion module did the big burn into Mars orbit. Viking 1 orbiter kept working until August 1980.

  1. 1Propulsion module - the bipropellant engine that slowed the spacecraft into Mars orbit.
  2. 2Solar panels - four of them, 15 square meters, about 620 watts at Mars distance.
  3. 3Viking lander capsule - the lander inside its aeroshell and bioshield, sterilized so Earth microbes would not confuse the biology experiments.
  4. 4High-gain antenna - 1.5 meters, pointed at Earth for the pictures.
  5. 5Low-gain antenna - the backup, for commands when the big dish was not pointed home.
Orbiter
Mass with propellant2,325 kg
Solar panels4, 15 sq m
Power at Marsapprox 620 W
High-gain antenna1.5 m
Cameras2 vidicon
Mars orbit insertion19 Jun 1976 (Viking 1)

Source: NASA Viking press kits, 1975 and 1976 (NASA Release 75-183 and 76-182).

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeMOI
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-6
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

Section VIMISSIONS OF RECORD

DSN

Fourteen firsts, from the first planet ever visited to the first aircraft to fly on another one.

MissionDateTargetOperatedEvent
Mariner 2 14 Dec 1962 Venus flyby 129 days First spacecraft to reach another planet; found Venus hot under its clouds
Mariner 4 14 Jul 1965 Mars flyby 3 yrs The first close pictures of another planet - 21 of them, craters, no canals
Surveyor 1 2 Jun 1966 Moon landing 7 months First U.S. soft landing; 11,000 pictures from the Ocean of Storms
Pioneer 10 3 Dec 1973 Jupiter flyby 30 yrs First through the asteroid belt, first past Jupiter; carries the plaque
Viking 1 20 Jul 1976 Mars landing 6 yrs First working lander on Mars; the first picture from the surface
Voyager 2 20 Aug 1977 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune 49 yrs + The Grand Tour - the only visitor to Uranus and Neptune
Voyager 1 5 Sep 1977 Jupiter, Saturn, interstellar 49 yrs + Farthest human-made object; the Pale Blue Dot, 1990
Magellan 10 Aug 1990 Venus orbit 4 yrs Mapped 98 percent of Venus by radar through the clouds
Galileo 7 Dec 1995 Jupiter orbit 14 yrs Dropped a probe into Jupiter; found an ocean under Europa
Mars Pathfinder 4 Jul 1997 Mars landing 83 sols Airbag landing; Sojourner, the first rover on another planet
Cassini - Huygens 30 Jun 2004 Saturn orbit 13 yrs Huygens landed on Titan, January 2005 - the farthest landing ever
Spirit and Opportunity 4 and 25 Jan 2004 Mars landings 6 and 15 yrs Ninety-day missions that ran for years; Opportunity drove 28 miles
Curiosity 6 Aug 2012 Gale Crater, Mars 14 yrs + Sky-crane landing; a nuclear-powered laboratory the size of a car
Perseverance + Ingenuity 18 Feb 2021 Jezero Crater, Mars 5 yrs + Ingenuity flew on April 19, 2021 - the first powered flight on another world

All but two launched from Cape Canaveral; Magellan and Galileo rode the Shuttle from Kennedy. Durations are how long the spacecraft kept working, not how long it was planned to.

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
Time1962 - 2026
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-2
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

FIG 3LANDER DESCENT PROFILE

DSN
LANDER DESCENT PROFILE
Tap the drawing to enlarge

From separation to touchdown in a little over three hours, most of it coasting down from orbit. The last part took six to thirteen minutes: aeroshell, parachute, then three throttled engines. Nobody on Earth could help; the light-time was 19 minutes. Viking 1 landed on July 20, 1976, seven years to the day after Apollo 11.

  1. 1Separation from the orbiter, then a deorbit burn and a long coast.
  2. 2Peak deceleration - between 24 and 30 kilometers up, the aeroshell doing the work.
  3. 3Parachute - a 16-meter chute opened at about 6,400 meters and the aeroshell fell away.
  4. 4Terminal descent - at 1,215 meters the engines lit, the chute was cut, and the lander came down at 2.4 meters per second.
Descent
Entry altitudeabout 250 km
Entry speed4.42 km/s
Parachute diameter16 m
Parachute openapprox 6,400 m
Engine ignitionapprox 1,215 m
Touchdown speed2.4 m/s
Entry to landing6 to 13 min

Source: NASA Viking press kits, 1975 and 1976 (NASA Release 75-183 and 76-182).

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeENTRY
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-7
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

FIG 4VIKING LANDED CONFIGURATION

DSN
VIKING LANDED CONFIGURATION
Tap the drawing to enlarge

About 600 kilograms on the surface, powered by two radioisotope generators so it did not care about dust or night. Two cameras, a weather station, a seismometer, a chemistry lab and three biology experiments, fed by a sampler arm that scooped the soil. Built to last 90 days; Viking 1 lander worked for six years.

  1. 1S-band high-gain antenna - talked straight to Earth as well as up to the orbiter.
  2. 2Cameras - two facsimile cameras that built a picture one vertical line at a time.
  3. 3Collector head - on the end of a 3-meter boom that reached out, dug, and delivered soil to the labs inside.
  4. 4Terminal descent engines - three, each with 18 small nozzles so the exhaust would not dig a hole or cook the soil samples.
  5. 5RTG under its wind cover - two SNAP-19 generators, about 70 watts between them.
Lander
Landed massapprox 600 kg
Power2 RTG, approx 70 W total
Cameras2
Sampler arm reach3 m
Biology experiments3
Viking 1 landing20 Jul 1976, Chryse Planitia
Viking 2 landing3 Sep 1976, Utopia Planitia

Source: NASA Viking press kits, 1975 and 1976 (NASA Release 75-183 and 76-182).

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeSOL 1
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-8
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

Section IVVOYAGER 2 - THE GRAND TOUR

DSN

Sequence of events, 1977 to interstellar space

Tick off the only spacecraft to visit all four giant planets. Launched from Cape Canaveral LC-41 on August 20, 1977.

Tap a box to check it off

Items complete 0/8SIGNAL ACQUIRED
MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
Time1977 - 2018
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-3
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

FIG 5VOYAGER FLIGHT PATHS

DSN
VOYAGER FLIGHT PATHS
Tap the drawing to enlarge

The plan as drawn in the summer of 1977, before launch. Two spacecraft, two routes, with Jupiter bending each one on to Saturn. The dates here are the pre-launch targets; Voyager 1 actually left on September 5, and Voyager 2 went on to Uranus on January 24, 1986 and Neptune on August 25, 1989, the Grand Tour the chart only hints at.

  1. 1Uranus - the option the chart leaves open. Voyager 2 took it.
  2. 2Saturn, Voyager 1, November 1980 - the close pass by Titan threw it up out of the plane of the planets for good.
  3. 3Jupiter, March 1979 - Voyager 1 arrived first even though it launched second.
  4. 4Earth, August 20, 1977 - Voyager 2 left first, on the slower road.
Encounters, as flown
Voyager 2 launch20 Aug 1977
Voyager 1 launch5 Sep 1977
Jupiter5 Mar 1979 (V1), 9 Jul 1979 (V2)
Saturn12 Nov 1980 (V1), 25 Aug 1981 (V2)
Uranus24 Jan 1986 (V2)
Neptune25 Aug 1989 (V2)

Source: NASA Voyager press kit, Release 77-136, August 1977.

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeL-0
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-9
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

FIG 6VOYAGER SPACECRAFT

DSN
VOYAGER SPACECRAFT
Tap the drawing to enlarge

Eight hundred and twenty-five kilograms, built around a 3.7-meter dish that had to point at Earth from four billion miles out. Everything hangs off a ten-sided bus: a boom for the magnetometers, a boom for the generators, and a steerable platform for the cameras. Both are still flying, and both are still talking.

  1. 1Magnetometer boom - 13 meters, so the sensors would be clear of the spacecraft's own fields.
  2. 2High-gain antenna - 3.7 meters across. At Neptune the signal that came back was a few billionths of a billionth of a watt.
  3. 3Scan platform - the cameras and spectrometers, pointed as a unit at whatever was going by.
  4. 4Radioisotope thermoelectric generators - three, on their own boom, 470 watts at launch.
  5. 5Propulsion fuel tank - 104 kilograms of hydrazine for the 16 thrusters. Most of it is still there.
Spacecraft
Mass825 kg
High-gain antenna3.7 m
Power at launch470 W
Thrusters16
Hydrazine104 kg
Science instruments11
Golden Record1 per spacecraft

Source: NASA Voyager press kit, Release 77-136, August 1977.

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeCRUISE
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-10
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

FIG 7RADIOISOTOPE THERMOELECTRIC GENERATOR

DSN
RADIOISOTOPE THERMOELECTRIC GENERATOR
Tap the drawing to enlarge

No moving parts. Twenty-four spheres of plutonium-238 oxide get hot on their own; 312 silicon-germanium couples turn some of that heat into current; the fins throw the rest away. Each generator gave about 157 watts at launch. The plutonium halves every 88 years, the couples wear, and the power drops about four watts a year, which is why the instruments have been switched off one by one.

  1. 1Silicon-germanium unicouples - 312 per generator, each a tiny thermocouple.
  2. 2Radioisotope heat source - 24 spheres of plutonium-238 oxide, about 2,400 watts of heat.
  3. 3Ribs and fins - the radiator that dumps the heat that did not become electricity.
  4. 4Beryllium end dome - the outer case, built light and built to survive a launch failure intact.
MHW-RTG
Generators per spacecraft3
Electric power at launch470 W total
Thermal powerapprox 2,400 W each
Fuelplutonium-238 oxide
Half-life87.7 years
Mass each37.7 kg
Power lossapprox 4 W per year

Source: NASA Voyager press kit, Release 77-136, August 1977.

MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
TimeYEAR 49
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-11
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK
JPL

Section ITERMS - DEEP SPACE

DSN
DSNDeep Space Network - three 70-meter dishes at Goldstone, Madrid and Canberra, 120 degrees apart so one always faces the sky
JPLJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena - NASA's center for robotic missions
OWLTOne-Way Light Time - how long a radio signal takes to arrive; 3 to 22 minutes to Mars
AUAstronomical Unit - the Earth-Sun distance, 93 million miles. Voyager 1 is past 170
RTGRadioisotope Thermoelectric Generator - plutonium heat turned into electricity; no sunlight needed
Gravity assistUsing a planet's pull to bend and speed a spacecraft - the trick that made the Grand Tour possible
FlybyA single pass with no stop; the first way we saw every planet
OrbiterA spacecraft that stays - Magellan, Galileo, Cassini
SolA Martian day, 24 hours 39 minutes; rover crews live on it
Uplink / downlinkCommands up, data down - at a few thousand bits per second from the outer planets
SOESequence of Events - the written timeline every command is checked against
Golden RecordThe 12-inch gold-plated copper disc on each Voyager - 55 greetings and 90 minutes of music
MissionDEEP SPACE
EditionFINAL
Date1962 - 2026
Time-
Day/Rev-
PageSOE-4
JPL - Pasadena, CaliforniaDEEP SPACE NETWORK

FEATURED COLLECTIONS

Discover our space-inspired apparel collections