The Forever Journey - by Jonathan Gertner (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The captivating story of humanity's most ambitious journey into outer space, a tribute to persistence and innovation--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Idea Factory

Far beyond the edge of our solar system, twin spacecraft sail through the darkness of space, blinking information, in 0s and 1s, back down to us every day. Here on Earth, at a laboratory in California, a team of NASA engineers receive these readings--from measurements of the plasma waves of deep space to the amount of fuel left on board--that trickle in from fifteen billion miles away. They are the stewards of these ships, known as the Voyagers: two spacecraft launched in 1977 that were only meant to last four and a half years. Fifty years later, they have not yet gone silent.

Award-winning journalist Jon Gertner takes us all the way back to the start, when one NASA engineer discovered that the planets would literally align to make the Voyagers' journey possible, to the construction of a machine that could withstand everything from radiation showers to asteroid belts, to the nerve-wracking first launch one warm summer afternoon on Cape Canaveral, to the bittersweet moment that the Voyagers left our solar system for good, to the present day, as a team of engineers struggles to keep the two distant, aging ships from slipping out of reach.

The Voyager project is a testament not only to the years of meticulous research and design that allowed the ships to surpass their life expectancy ten times over, but to the power of human ambition and the value of long-term thinking. Awe-inspiring and endlessly fascinating, The Forever Journey is the account of an eternal mission--and how a project handed down through generations has become perhaps the greatest scientific triumph of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Jon Gertner is a journalist and historian whose stories on science, technology, and nature have appeared in a host of national magazines. Since 2003 he has worked as a feature writer for The New York Times Magazine. He has written two previous books, The Idea Factory, a New York Times bestseller, and The Ice at the End of the World. A frequent lecturer on technology and science history, Gertner lives with his family in New Jersey.