first scientific voyage

Voyager 1 Sends Clear Data to NASA for the First Time in Five Months

The farthest spacecraft from Earth had been transmitting nonsense since November, but after an engineering tweak, it finally beamed back a report on its health and status

Will Sullivan

Daily Correspondent

For the first time in five months, NASA has received usable data from Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from Earth.

The aging probe, which has traveled more than 15 billion miles into space, stopped transmitting science and engineering data on November 14. Instead, it sent NASA a nonsensical stream of repetitive binary code . For months, the agency’s engineers undertook a slow process of trial and error, giving the spacecraft various commands and waiting to see how it responded. Thanks to some creative thinking, the team identified a broken chip on the spacecraft and relocated some of the code that was stored there, according to the agency .

NASA is now receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1’s engineering systems. The next step is to get the spacecraft to start sending science data again.

“Today was a great day for Voyager 1,” Linda Spilker , a Voyager project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement over the weekend, per CNN ’s Ashley Strickland. “We’re back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back.”

Hi, it's me. - V1 https://t.co/jgGFBfxIOe — NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) April 22, 2024

Voyager 1 and its companion, Voyager 2, separately launched from Earth in 1977. Between the two of them, the probes have studied all four giant planets in the outer solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—along with 48 of their moons and the planets’ magnetic fields. The spacecraft observed Saturn’s rings in detail and discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io .

Originally designed for a five-year mission within our solar system, both probes are still operational and chugging along through space, far beyond Pluto’s orbit. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, the area between stars. The probe is now about eight times farther from the sun than Uranus is on average.

Over the decades, the Voyager spacecraft have transmitted data collected on their travels back to NASA scientists. But in November, Voyager 1 started sending gibberish .

Engineers determined Voyager 1’s issue was with one of three onboard computers, called the flight data system (FDS), NASA said in a December blog post . While the spacecraft was still receiving and executing commands from Earth, the FDS was not communicating properly with a subsystem called the telemetry modulation unit (TMU). The FDS collects science and engineering data and combines it into a package that the TMU transmits back to Earth.

Since Voyager 1 is so far away, testing solutions to its technical issues requires time—it takes 22.5 hours for commands to reach the probe and another 22.5 hours for Voyager 1’s response to come back.

On March 1, engineers sent a command that coaxed Voyager 1 into sending a readout of the FDS memory, NASA said in a March 13 blog post . From that readout, the team confirmed a small part—about 3 percent—of the system’s memory had been corrupted, NASA said in an April 4 update .

The core of the problem turned out to be a faulty chip hosting some software code and part of the FDS memory. NASA doesn’t know what caused the chip to stop working—it could be that a high-energy particle from space collided with it, or the chip might have just run out of steam after almost 50 years spent hurtling through the cosmos.

“It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft,” Suzanne Dodd , Voyager project manager at JPL, told Scientific American ’s Nadia Drake in March.

To receive usable data again, the engineers needed to move the affected code somewhere else that wasn’t broken. But no single location in the FDS memory was large enough to hold all of the code, so the engineers divided it into chunks and stored it in multiple places, per NASA .

The team started with moving the code responsible for sending Voyager’s status reports, sending it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. They received confirmation that the strategy worked on April 20, when the first data on the spacecraft’s health since November arrived on Earth.

In the next several weeks, the team will relocate the parts of the FDS software that can start returning science data.

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Will Sullivan | | READ MORE

Will Sullivan is a science writer based in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in Inside Science and NOVA Next .

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45 years ago: voyager 1 begins its epic journey to the outer planets and beyond, johnson space center.

Forty-five years ago, the Voyager 1 spacecraft began an epic journey that continues to this day. The second of a pair of spacecraft, Voyager 1 lifted off on Sept. 5, 1977, 16 days after its twin left on a similar voyage. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, managed the two spacecraft on their missions to explore the outer planets. Taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment to use the gravity of one planet to redirect the spacecraft to the next, the Voyagers planned to use Jupiter’s gravity to send them on to explore Saturn and its large moon Titan. They carried sophisticated instruments to conduct their in-depth explorations of the giant planets. Both spacecraft continue to return data as they make their way out of our solar system and enter interstellar space.

In the 1960s, mission designers at JPL noted that the next occurrence of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets would happen in the late 1970s. A spacecraft could take advantage of this opportunity to fly by Jupiter and use its gravity to bend its trajectory to visit Saturn, and repeat the process to also visit Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Launching several missions to visit each planet individually would take much longer and cost much more. The original plan to send two pairs of Thermoelectric Outer Planet Spacecraft on these Grand Tours proved too costly leading to its cancellation in 1971. The next year, NASA approved a scaled-down version of the project to send a pair of Mariner-class spacecraft in 1977 to explore just Jupiter and Saturn, with an expected five-year operational life. On March 7, 1977, NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher announced the renaming of these Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 spacecraft as Voyager 1 and 2. Scientists held out hope that one of them could ultimately visit Uranus and Neptune, thereby fulfilling most of the original Grand Tour’s objectives – Pluto would have to wait several decades for its first visit.

Each Voyager carried a suite of 11 instruments to study the planets during each encounter and to learn more about interplanetary space in the outer reaches of the solar system, including: 

• An imaging science system consisting of narrow-angle and wide-angle cameras to photograph the planet and its satellites.
• A radio science system to determine the planet’s physical properties.
• An infrared interferometer spectrometer to investigate local and global energy balance and atmospheric composition.
• An ultraviolet spectrometer to measure atmospheric properties.
• A magnetometer to analyze the planet’s magnetic field and interaction with the solar wind.
• A plasma spectrometer to investigate microscopic properties of plasma ions.
• A low-energy charged particle device to measure fluxes and distributions of ions.
• A cosmic ray detection system to determine the origin and behavior of cosmic radiation.
• A planetary radio astronomy investigation to study radio emissions from Jupiter.
• A photopolarimeter to measure the planet’s surface composition.
• A plasma wave system to study the planet’s magnetosphere.

Voyager 1 lifted off on Sept. 5, 1977, atop a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida. Two weeks after its launch, from a distance of 7.25 million miles, Voyager 1 turned its camera back toward its home planet and took the first single-frame image of the Earth-Moon system. The spacecraft successfully crossed the asteroid belt between Dec. 10, 1977, and Sept. 8, 1978.

Although Voyager 1 launched two weeks after its twin, it traveled on a faster trajectory and arrived at Jupiter four months earlier. Voyager 1 conducted its observations of Jupiter between Jan. 6 and April 13, 1979, making its closest approach of 216,837 miles from the planet’s center on March 5. The spacecraft returned 19,000 images of the giant planet, many of Jupiter’s satellites, and confirmed the presence of a thin ring encircling it. Its other instruments returned information about Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetic field. Jupiter’s massive gravity field bent the spacecraft’s trajectory and accelerated it toward Saturn.

Voyager 1 began its long-range observations of Saturn on Aug. 22, 1980, passed within 114,500 miles of the planet’s center on Nov. 12, and concluded its studies on Dec. 14. Because of its interest to scientists, mission planners chose the spacecraft’s trajectory to make a close flyby of Saturn’s largest moon Titan – the only planetary satellite with a dense atmosphere – just before the closest approach to the planet itself. This trajectory, passing over Saturn’s south pole and bending north over the plane of the ecliptic, precluded Voyager 1 from making any additional planetary encounters. The spacecraft flew 4,033 miles from Titan’s center, returning images of its unbroken orange atmosphere and high-altitude blue haze layer. During the encounter, Voyager 1 returned 16,000 photographs, imaging Saturn, its rings, many of its known satellites and discovering several new ones, while its instruments returned data about Saturn’s atmosphere and magnetic field.

On Feb. 14, 1990, more than 12 years after it began its journey from Earth and shortly before controllers  permanently turned off its cameras to conserve power, Voyager 1 spun around and pointed them back into the solar system. In a mosaic of 60 images, it captured a “family portrait” of six of the solar system’s planets, including a pale blue dot called Earth more than 3.7 billion miles away. Fittingly, these were the last pictures returned from either Voyager spacecraft. On Feb. 17, 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object, overtaking the Pioneer 10 spacecraft on their way out of the solar system. In February 2020, to commemorate the photograph’s 30th anniversary, NASA released a remastered version of the image of Earth as Pale Blue Dot Revisited .

On New Year’s Day 1990, both spacecraft officially began the Voyager Interstellar Mission as they inexorably made their escape from our solar system. On Aug. 25, 2012, Voyager 1 passed beyond the heliopause, the boundary between the heliosphere, the bubble-like region of space created by the Sun, and the interstellar medium. Its twin followed suit six years later. Today , 45 years after its launch and 14.6 billion miles from Earth, four of Voyager 1’s 11 instruments continue to return useful data, having now spent 10 years in interstellar space. Signals from the spacecraft take nearly 22 hours to reach Earth, and 22 hours for Earth-based signals to reach the spacecraft. Engineers expect that the spacecraft will continue to return data from interstellar space until about 2025 when it will no longer be able to power its systems. And just in case an alien intelligence finds it one day, Voyager 1 like its twin carries a gold-plated record that contains information about its home planet, including recordings of terrestrial sounds, music, and greetings in 55 languages. Engineers at NASA thoughtfully included Instructions on how to play the record.

The voyage continues…

Scientific Visual Representations in History pp 251–286 Cite as

Science, Photography, and Objectivity? Exploring Nineteenth-Century Visual Cultures through the HMS Challenger Expedition (1872–1876)

• Stephanie L. Hood 4  
• Open Access
• First Online: 02 January 2023

1154 Accesses

Preparing to set off from England in 1872 on an oceanographic expedition around the globe, the officers and crew of HMS Challenger gathered on board the ship for a photographic portrait. It was one of the first photographs of crew on a scientific voyage of exploration ever taken. Over eight hundred photographs were taken or acquired on the Challenger in addition to drawings and paintings. This chapter uses these photographs to reexamine Daston and Galison’s theory that photography was successful in nineteenth-century science on account of its perceived “objectivity” as an epistemic ideal. The chapter first outlines the history and historiography of photography and of the Challenger expedition, proceeding to outline photographic practices on the voyage, and evaluating the photographs’ place within longer aesthetic traditions. It then examines the Challenger photographs’ circulation and use in its official scientific report , and in wider scientific contexts. The chapter finally analyzes the photographs’ personal, and then broader public, economic, and political circulation and uses. It concludes by arguing that drawing and painting were the preferred scientific visual strategies on the Challenger , indicating that photography was not preferred on account of its perceived “objectivity” for science. Instead, photographs afforded other benefits such as speed of capture, replicability, and adaptability—for economic, social, and political use as well as scientific. Photography was therefore an effective visual strategy not on account of its perceived scientific “objectivity” but due to its flexibility , which corresponded to the expedition’s scientific aims as well as its broader economic, social, and political context.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

1 A Short History of the Challenger Expedition, Photography, and Their Historiographies

1.1 history and historiography of the challenger expedition.

As the first ship known to be specifically adapted for global oceanographic investigation, the HMS Challenger undertook her 69,000-nautical mile circumnavigation of the globe between December 1872 and May 1876. Commissioned and sponsored by the British government and the Royal Society (Britain’s organization for scientific research), the ship carried both naval and civil scientific crew, including Royal Navy Officer and explorer Captain George Strong Nares (1831–1915) and a Director of Scientific Staff, the natural historian and marine zoologist Charles Wyville Thomson (1830–1882). The expedition’s scientific objectives, as outlined by the Royal Society, were clear: to research the biological, physical, and chemical constitutions of the ocean. The ship was equipped especially for purpose, comprising the chemical and zoological laboratories, workrooms, libraries, archival resources, and measuring devices requisite for oceanographic research (Brunton 2004 , 1–15). It is therefore unsurprising that the historiography of the Challenger voyage has focused upon its scientific purposes and achievements. Accounts by historians Richard Corfield, Erika Jones, Eric Linklater, Helen Rozwadowski, and Maurice Yonge have outlined the importance of the expedition for scientific research, with Rozwadowski in particular emphasizing how the Challenger signified a shift from the “romantic” voyages reminiscent of those of James Cook to “business-like” scientific exploration (Linklater 1972 ; Yonge 1972 ; Corfield 2003 ; Rozwadowski 2009 , 27–61, 106–216; Jones 2019 ). Although voyages of exploration were common in the nineteenth century, the Challenger generated significant interest: regular updates were published in both scientific circles and public press during the expedition, and afterwards in the official scientific Report, receiving considerable public and scientific attention (Tizard et al. 1885 , 47–48; Linklater 1972 , 12; Corfield 2003 , 4–5; Kennedy 2007 ).

1.2 Visual Culture on the Challenger Expedition

Visual depiction had long been a common practice on such voyages of exploration, with drawing and painting serving for scientific, artistic, and other documentary purposes (Jacobs 1995 ; Smith 1992 , 1985 ; Quilley 2011 ). Drawing and painting was likewise an integral practice on the Challenger expedition—but in addition over eight hundred photographs were accumulated, including the first known to exist of Antarctic icebergs (Headland 1989 , 107). Other photographs in the expedition’s unique collection depict the voyagers aboard the ship with indigenous peoples and in vast landscapes, as individual portraits and amongst groups of people; vegetation, modes of transport, various forms of architecture, geology, tombstones, and copies of graphs and drawings also featured. Historian Eileen Brunton made significant progress in cataloguing the photographs, identifying the names of the photographers and inferring their purpose to have been as anthropological evidence and as economic commodities (Brunton 2004 , 1–20). Rosamunde Codling has claimed photographs of icebergs made on the Challenger expedition were seen as an “accurate reproduction” of their subjects, while James Ryan has described the photographs’ “unique appeal” in comparison to other forms of visual depiction to “serve the sciences of anthropology, geography, geology, and botany,” nevertheless noting that many of them are more comparable to tourist souvenirs than scientific evidence (Codling 1997 , 206; Ryan 2013 , 33–35, 116–117). Aside from these historiographies, the visual culture of the Challenger , and in particular its photographs and photographic practices, have evaded in-depth historical research until now.

1.3 Objectivity? The Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Photography and Science

Photography was a popular visual strategy in scientific research in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and photographic practices in science more generally during this time period have received greater historiographical attention. Photography was fundamentally perceived as an empirical, objective means of recording the world in the years of the Challenger voyage: a photographic manual published during the expedition claimed that “a painting or watercolor can never have such rigorous precision” in comparison (Tissandier 1876 , 302). A common historiographical theme is therefore that of photography’s perceived “objectivity” in science, supposedly achieved through its ability to overcome the subjectivity of human observation, and that represented a shift from the preceding aesthetic and representational traditions seen in drawing and painting. One example of such historiography is that of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, who argue—using atlases as a case study—that photography was applied in nineteenth-century science owing to this supposed ability to combat “the subjectivity of scientific and aesthetic judgment” (Daston and Galison 2007 , 82). Photography, Daston and Galison argue, was perceived as a tool that enabled one to achieve “mechanical objectivity” in scientific image-making that, when undertaken by a trained “ideal character,” would “move nature to the page through a strict protocol, if not automatically” (Daston and Galison 2007 , 121). This mechanical objectivity stood in contrast with the earlier visual “ideal” or “truth-to-nature” illustrations produced by drawing and painting—which aimed to extract universal truths and depended upon the subjective judgment of its artist—and made photography particularly appealing as a visual strategy in nineteenth-century science (Daston and Galison 1992 , 98).

Likewise, historians Kelley Wilder, Christopher Pinney, and Joan Schwartz have emphasized a nineteenth-century preference for photography in science owing to its perceived “objectivity.” Schwartz, for example, has claimed that “photographs were embraced as a scientific and objective way of capturing the world” during the time period (Schwartz 2000 , 7–23, 26, 33–34; Wilder 2009 , 7; Pinney 2011 , 15). Similarly, the visual and historical anthropologist Elizabeth Edwards has shown that photography was preferred over drawings as a means of obtaining objective images for racial “typing” of people in nineteenth-century anthropological science (Edwards 1990 , 235–258). This historiographical trend gives additional weight to the idea that photography was successful on account of its reputation as an “objective” means of data collection and visual observation for science in the nineteenth century, which was preferred over “subjective” written accounts, drawings, and paintings (Davenport 1991 , 59–75, 106–107; Schwartz 2000 , 7–23, 33–34; Kennedy 2007 ; Wilder 2009 , 7; Pinney 2011 , 15).

1.4 Historiographical Divergence and Complexity

This historiographical norm has nevertheless not gone entirely undisputed. Some historians such as Jennifer Tucker argue that the idea is too simplistic, and that nineteenth-century scientists “did not…accept photographic evidence as unconditionally true” but viewed and interpreted photographs just as they did other scientific images (Tucker 1997 , 378–381; 2005 , 2–4). More closely connected to this chapter’s theme, Ryan has also revealed the complexity of photography on voyages of exploration and argued that photographs were “essential to visualizing the romance as well as the science” of expeditions during this period (Ryan 2013 , 19–21, 117, 170–171). Despite claiming that photography was successful in science on account of its supposed objectivity, Wilder too has emphasized how even photographs made as scientific evidence could also be used as art, consequently taking on different, subjective meanings and uses (Wilder 2009 , 53). It is this complexity that this chapter seeks to further investigate in relation to the Challenger expedition: from here it therefore begins by evaluating the expedition’s photographic collection and practices, and how it connects to this historiography .

2 Complexity: The Challenger’s Photographic Practices and Collections

From the 1850s—not long after photography’s invention by Louis Daguerre (1787–1851) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) in 1839—photographic equipment became a standard tool for visual documentation on voyages of exploration (Wamsley and Barr 1996 ; Hannavy 2007 ; Ryan 2013 , 8–13). The Challenger expedition was no exception to this development: the ship adopted photography as a visual strategy in addition to carrying an official artist, John James Wild (1824–1900), and benefited from its own on-board darkroom that was installed especially for the voyage (Brunton 2004 , 16). It is not clear whether the Challenger expedition’s photography followed a formal procedure—a discernible official protocol has not been found—but the need for “objectivity” in photography was not mentioned in any of the available reports by the crew . The expedition’s photographic practices therefore demand further analysis.

2.1 Ideal Characters? The Several Photographers of the Challenger Expedition

At least three official photographers were employed on the Challenger voyage. The first, Caleb Newbold, joined at the start of the expedition in December 1872. A letter from his instructor in the British Journal of Photography stated that he had taken his photographic training with the Royal Engineers—a corps of the colonial-era British Armed Forces providing military engineering and technical support—for “some two-and-a-half years” (Abney 1873 , 57). This indicates that some consideration had gone into placing the Challenger photography into trained hands. Footnote 1 Since photographers of the Royal Engineers were employed to generate a “collective record” of exploration rather than being independent creators of their work, the information on Newbold is unfortunately limited (Ryan 1997 , 81). However, as a Royal Engineer, we can know that Newbold would have been trained for military and topographic surveying rather than necessarily for producing objective scientific evidence (Haworth-Booth 1984 , 114). After Newbold deserted the ship in late 1873, Frederick Hodgeson replaced him until June 1874, from when there exists a gap—possibly occupied by an unnamed photographer—until Jesse Lay, another Royal Engineer photographer trained for military purposes, joined the expedition in 1875 and stayed for remainder of the voyage (Brunton 2004 , 1–21). Footnote 2 The multiple photographers and the fact that they were primarily trained for military purposes indicates that the scientific “ideal character” was not a priority in the photography of the expedition.

2.2 The Challenger ’s Diverse Photographic Methods

The various methods by which the Challenger photographs were made also uncover their limitations as “objective” scientific evidence. Its photographic practice was certainly taken seriously: as well as having its own darkroom, a notice in The British Journal of Photography claimed “a very complete photographic equipment” to have been purchased for the expedition (Abney 1873 , 57). It has not been possible to confirm the camera type used by the official photographers, but a whole plate Dallmeyer wide-angle rectilinear lens was purchased eighteen months into the voyage. Footnote 3 This lens was popular for landscape photography, so it is likely that the official photographer chose lenses for certain purposes, using more than one lens type to suit the subject and conditions (Dallmeyer 1874 , 59–62; Kingslake 1989 ). Both whole plates (6½” × 8½”) and the more customary half plates (4½” × 5½”) were used, enabling the production of different sized photographs. Footnote 4 Inventories from England, Hong Kong, and Japan also reveal the purchase of collodion filters that, together with the listing of a dark tent for portable developing, indicates that photographs were made using the wet collodion method standard for professional and amateur photographers from the mid-1850s onwards. Footnote 5 Wet collodion was also the most common photographic technique on voyages of exploration until the mid-1870s owing to its sharpness, durability, and speed in comparison to earlier daguerreotype and calotype photography, and due to the wider availability of its equipment compared to the newer dry plate method (Davenport 1991 , 22; McGabe 1991 , 41–45).

The Challenger expedition photography therefore represents a continuation of the photographic practices common on other voyages of exploration in the mid-nineteenth century (Davenport 1991 , 22). The wet collodion method enabled a near-universal representation of a range of subjects and was popular in scientific imaging on account of its fine detail (Davenport 1991 , 22; Ryan 1997 , 25). But even this method required long exposure times and could be unreliable in the development process, often resulting in a rippling effect in the final photograph. On the Challenger expedition this problem was even more severe than usual, as highlighted by Assistant Paymaster John Hynes’ complaint in his journal that photographs taken of icebergs between Samboangan and Humboldt Bay were “not very good in consequence of the motion of the ship.” Footnote 6 The naval crew members were not the only people on the Challenger to lament at the poor quality of its photography: on attempts to produce photographs as scientific evidence, Director of Scientific Staff Thomson complained that we were very anxious to carry away a permanent record of the present condition of…stalagmite, and we twice tried to photograph it with the magnesium light. On the first occasion the picture came out fairly, but, most unfortunately, in the darkness the difficulty of conducting such operations it was spoiled. When we tried it again, there was something wrong with the bath, and it was a complete failure (Thomson 1878 , 34).

We can see ourselves that this was the case: a number of the Challenger photographs were blurred, smudged, and lacking lucidity. Footnote 7 Although Charles Wyville Thomson’s statement indicates that the photographs were indeed intended for scientific use, the photographic process on the Challenger was clearly complex and prone to error, limiting its status as an objective visual strategy.

The story of photography on the Challenger is complicated further upon examination of two of the glass negatives from Lay’s time on the voyage, which indicate that a second technique, the dry collodion method, was also used. Footnote 8 Dry plate technology was uncommon on voyages of exploration until the later 1870s owing to the lack of availability of apparatus as an early form of photographic technology (Wamsley and Barr 1996 , 311–314; Ryan 2013 , 13). However, it was more convenient for photographs taken at a distance from the ship compared to the wet collodion process, as it did not require developing immediately. Dry collodion photography also avoided the major disadvantage of wet collodion’s requirement of a cumbersome traveling laboratory for instant developing, a constraint that greatly inconvenienced the photographer when travelling long distances, in bad weather, or across awkward terrain (Davenport 1991 , 22). The dry collodion method was certainly in use on the expedition: the renowned photographic supplier Henry Stuart-Wortley claimed in Nature and The British Journal of Photography to have supplied the photographers with apparatus for the dry plate method, and Lay claimed in a letter to Stuart-Wortley that he had “travelled up 2,500 feet (where the wet process seemed impossible) and obtained perfect negatives” using the dry plates (Stuart-Wortley 1875a , 25–26, b , 550–551). But while this method offered the benefit of convenience over wet collodion, it had the disadvantage of an average exposure time three times longer, leading it to produce even poorer quality and inaccurate images (Wamsley and Barr 1996 , 309). Footnote 9 If “objectivity” required a “strict protocol” then these mixed practices indicate that photography was not being used on the expedition on account of such a benefit for its scientific research alone (Daston and Galison 1992 , 118).

2.3 The Multiple Mediators and Sources of the Challenger Photographs

The Challenger photographs’ multiple mediators and sources provide further evidence that their “objectivity” for scientific use was not a priority (Daston and Galison 2007 , 121). Several people whom the crew encountered on land throughout the voyage requested photographs to be taken by the official photographer—for example, Challenger engineer William Spry declared in his book that the King and Queen of Tonga “expressed a wish during our stay to have their portraits taken. This was attended to, and for the occasion their Majesties were got up in regal attire” (Spry 1877 , 184–185; Daston and Galison 1992 , 103). The photographs that were taken appear to have been considered just as valuable as the others, as they were retained in the official expedition collection. Footnote 10 Around a quarter of the catalogued photographs were also purchased or received as gifts by the crew at several stages of the voyage, as opposed to having been taken by the on-board photographers. According to the letters of Challenger naturalist Rudolf von Willemoes-Suhm (1847–1875) some photographs were received in Hong Kong, and self-portraits were obtained from the Japanese Mikado and Mikadesse. Footnote 11 Spry also noted in his popular account of the expedition that a single photograph of a Buddha Footnote 12 was bought from a “priest in attendance” at a temple in Japan, while Sub-lieutenant Andrew Francis Balfour, also onboard the ship, wrote in his journal that he had received photographs as gifts in Sydney, Australia from a local family and had bought others in Manila (Spry 1877 , 294). Footnote 13 Other photographs in the collection were purchased from photographers in New Zealand, at least one of which can be attributed to William Thomas Locke Travers (1819–1903)—a local lawyer, politician, explorer, photographer, and naturalist. Footnote 14 Considering the multiplicity of the photographs—made by different people, in various ways, and collected from various sources—leads one to consider if they were even considered to be “scientific” images. How, for example, did they fit into wider aesthetic traditions?

3 Art or Science? Placing the Challenger Photographs within Longer Aesthetic Traditions

The nineteenth-century status of photography as an objective visual strategy has been taken to separate it from longer aesthetic traditions, such as the ideal, “truth-to-nature” representations achieved by drawing and painting (Daston and Galison 1992 , 2007 ). Yet the Challenger photographs can be seen to represent such an “ideal,” on account of the aesthetic selectivity as to what was chosen for inclusion, and as is evident in the photographs’ broad range of content as described at the start of this chapter. Looking at how they fit within longer artistic conventions can therefore reveal more to us about the reasoning behind photography on the Challenger.

3.1 Aesthetic Selectivity and Naturalistic Visual Ordering

While Daston and Galison have claimed that the “objectivity” of photography was seen to remove artistry, arguing that the strategy was used for scientific evidence because those using it believed it “could and would triumph over art,” the Challenger photographs display many traditions in art on voyages of exploration (Daston and Galison 1992 , 98–100). Such images were able to gain authority not through their supposed “objectivity” but by appealing to artistic convention: the Challenger photographs continued the naturalistic visual ordering of the world that is commonly seen in the history of art on eighteenth and nineteenth-century voyages of exploration. Take, for example, the painting of eighteenth-century natural history artist Sydney Parkinson, Portrait of a New Zealand Man (1769), which has been credited with recording people with the “detachment of an anthropologist” as part of naturalistic ethnographic conventions (Jacobs 1995 , 84; Smith 1992 , 83–85). Art historian Michael Jacobs asserts that this painting portrayed people with little evidence of displaying emotion—a tradition evoked in many of the front and profile portrait Challenger photographs of indigenous peoples in the Pacific. Footnote 15 In this way the photographs appealed to science through following naturalistic artistic conventions rather than by evading them.

3.2 The Depiction of Character, Romanticism, and Adventure in Artistic Traditions

While much art from voyages of exploration had developed this naturalistic style of depiction by the nineteenth century, it was inevitably influenced by the wider artistic conventions of the era, and particularly by the Romantic movement (Jacobs 1995 , 9–14). The eighteenth-century painter William Hodges, who traveled on expeditions with James Cook, has been credited with sketching indigenous people not as detached ethnographic “types,” but showing pronounced expression and a sense of character (Jacobs 1995 , 88). This aesthetic theme can also be seen in a Challenger photograph of a Moro Indian, which is set up to include props that hint at the personality of the individual being represented (Fig.  9.1 ). In addition, by portraying extended topographical scenes across several photographs, the Challenger also continued the artistic tradition of the landscape panorama style that art historian Bernard Smith claims emerged in the late eighteenth century (Smith 1985 , 218). Footnote 16

Photograph of a Moro Indian (ship no. 339, original in Album three of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0176, n.p.)

A considerable number of artworks made on voyages of exploration in the late eighteenth and nineteenth-century were also influenced by a Romantic sense of adventure, and were often produced to appeal to increasing British public interest in travel (Jacobs 1995 , 9–14, 80–90). Artists had long played important roles in familiarizing the public with unknown places, none more so than in the Pacific (Jacobs 1995 , 80). This theme is also apparent in many of the Challenger photographs: one of the Pacific Island of Tonga depicts palm trees and people along a vast beach that disappears into the distance (Fig.  9.2 ), evoking a William Hodges’ 1773 painting of the South Pacific, View from Point Venus . Although photographs were unable to capture color, perspective, or depict light to enhance the romance of the scene—and as a result View from Point Venus evokes the warm, tropical climate in a way that the photograph arguably does not—the Romantic aesthetic is evident in both. In this sense the Challenger photographs fit Ryan’s assertion that photography was used to capture the romantic as well as scientific features of exploration (Ryan 2013 , 19–21).

Photograph of Beach, Tonga (ship no. 254, original in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0175, n.p.)

This likelihood is raised further when comparing the photographs to Thomas Baines’ watercolor Herd of Buffaloes at the Victoria Falls (1862), which depicts an unusual landscape and scenes of human interaction. Footnote 17 Such representation of both people and place is evident in a Challenger photograph of a village in the Admiralty Islands, in which a group of indigenous people dwells amongst palm trees outside their “exotic” home. Footnote 18 Also outside of the newly-experienced South Pacific, drawings and paintings often portrayed nature, according to Jacobs, “at her most strikingly unusual…with an overlay of metaphor, poetry and adventure” (Jacobs 1995 , 153). Footnote 19 As the first known photographs of Antarctic icebergs, the Challenger therefore likewise captured visual scenes to create an impression of the unusual with a sense of romance, adventure, and excitement typical of aesthetic traditions on voyages of exploration (Fig.  9.3 ). Footnote 20

Antarctic Icebergs (ship no. 178 in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0175, n.p.)

3.3 Aesthetics of Empire

In the context of nineteenth-century British imperialism, themes of Empire and trade were another common aesthetic in art in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (Barringer et al. 2007 , 1–19; Quilley 2011 ). Such themes are also evident in the Challenger photographs: one of them, for example, shows indigenous peoples crossing the ocean in a canoe to trade with the inhabitants of a nearby island, inkeeping with a common aesthetic theme of exchange (Barringer et al. 2007 , 1; Quilley 2011 , 10). Other photographs appear to seek to express a sense of British imperial superiority, attempting to construct an image of a “civilized” crew amongst “primitive” indigenous people, which is another theme commonly seen in nineteenth-century expedition art in the context of Empire (Quilley 2011 , 60). Footnote 21 The Challenger photographs furthermore represent such nineteenth–century themes as colonial possession by their depiction of churches and government buildings in the imperial Kingdom of Hawaii: the portrayal of colonial architecture was a particular theme in the paintings of eighteenth-century artist Edward Dayes (Quilley 2011 , 10; McLean 2007 ). Footnote 22 In addition, and further complicating the story of these images, one Challenger photograph in Lieutenant Alfred Carpenter’s album not only portrayed a fort in Tahiti but was also annotated with a description of the “wall defending mountain pass,” suggesting this fact to be of some importance and perhaps connecting it to art or even Imperial military survey rather than objective scientific evidence. Footnote 23

This is not to argue that every Challenger photograph represented subjects or scenes in a way that connects them to the wider history of art on voyages of exploration, nor is every aesthetic tradition manifest in the photographs. Despite following themes in the history of art, the lack of color, comparable quality of light, and patterns of brushstrokes in photographs separates them from longer aesthetics traditions, while some photographs—particularly face and profile portraits—do neverthless appear more inkeeping with photography used as “objective” scientific evidence. Footnote 24 Yet for many of the photographs their status as evidence depended upon a debt to existing artistic conventions, inferring an epistemic authority as art rather than as “objective” visual scientific evidence. Such a paradox leads this chapter to ask: Were the photographs circulated and used scientifically, and if so, how? Can this reveal more about photography as a visual strategy on the Challenger expedition?

4 Scientific Circulation and Use: Photographs in the Official Report of Scientific Results

This chapter has already shown that the Challenger photographs were limited in their intention and ability to serve as “objective” scientific evidence, but it is nevertheless clear that a number of them were anticipated for scientific use from the outset. Minutes from a meeting of the Royal Society in the weeks before the expedition stated that “photographs or careful drawings of tropical vegetation often contain very interesting information, and should contain some reference to a scale of dimensions,” Footnote 25 while instructions added to the oceanographic objectives of the expedition stated that “Every opportunity should be taken of obtaining photographs of native races to one scale” for anthropological use (Brunton 2004 , 15). These clear scientific intentions therefore warrant a further look at how the photographs were used in the official fifty-volume Report of Scientific Results , which was issued in the decades following the voyage, alongside its other visual strategies (Fig.  9.4 ). Footnote 26

Front page of the  Narrative  to the  Official Report of Scientific Results  (Tizard et al.  1885 . Narrative of the Cruise of H.M.S Challenger with a General Account of the Scientific Results of the Expedition. In  Report on the scientific results of the voyage of HMS ‘Challenger' during the years 1873–1876 . London: Longmans and Co.)

4.1 Photographic Plates and Woodcut Reproductions

As intended, some of the Challenger photographs went on to find scientific uses in the official Report . Thirty-five of them appeared as plates in its first volume, the Narrative : one of them, labeled as “Wood Scenery, Tonga,” was used as a means of illustrating “plain evidence of the reduction of the population” of vegetation in the landscape on the Polynesian island (Tizard et al. 1885 , 484, ship no. 257a). Others were used to exhibit the patterns of the Pringlea antiscorbutica (Kerguelen cabbage) and Azorella selago plant species on the Kerguelen Islands of Antarctica, a prominent site of scientific enquiry in the 1870s (Tizard et al. 1885 , 299, 300, ship nos. 228a, 220). Footnote 27

In addition to these thirty-five plates, several of the Challenger photographs were also published in the Narrative as woodcut reproductions, such as those of Carica papaya trees (Fig.  9.5 ). There is no discernible reason as to why certain photographs were printed as plates and others as reproductions, but it might have been a result of the practical limitations posed by printing several plates, or more likely an issue of cost, since photographic plates were significantly more expensive to print than woodcuts. In any case, once transformed into woodcut reproductions, less authority was afforded to photographs over drawings or paintings as scientific evidence (Daston and Galison 1992 , 101). Rather than photography serving as “objective” visual evidence, therefore, this serves as further indication that it must have been used as a visual strategy for the expedition’s scientific purposes owing to other advantages it had over drawing and painting.

“Papaw trees (Carica papaya), in the Governor’s garden at Clarence Hill.” Reproduced from ship no. 69 of trees in Bermuda (Tizard et al., “Narrative of the Cruise,” 147; original photograph in Photograph Album of Thomas Henry Tizard 1873–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0859, n.p.)

4.2 Maintenance of Drawing Practices for Illustrating Scientific Specimens

This assertion is further supported by the fact that drawing, rather than photography, was maintained as a means of accurately illustrating specimens in the Narrative . Few of the Challenger photographs depicted individual flora or fauna, a preference for the authentic depiction of which was maintained through these drawings made by the on-board artist Wild and the scientific crew Willemoes-Suhm, Moseley, and Wyville Thomson. Many of these illustrations published in the Narrative were produced using a camera lucida in order to draw to scale and with accurate perspective, such as that of the crustacean Polycheles crucifera . Footnote 28 The camera lucida was listed separately from Wild’s drawing and painting materials, suggesting that it was perceived as a scientific instrument for the crew to be able to draw in perspective rather than as a purely artistic tool. Footnote 29 Wild also asserted the importance of his own drawings and paintings in “representing…accurately…the natural scenery,” indicating that these images were intended for use as accurate scientific evidence (Wild 1878 , 4). This theory that drawing was preferred as a scientific visual tool on the Challenger is supported further by letters written by Captain Thomson during the voyage, where he claimed that certain species were to be “described and illustrated under my direction,” praising Wild to be “most expert in drawing animals.” Footnote 30

4.3 Depicting Color

A further, and perhaps more clearly discernible reason that drawings and paintings were prioritized over photographs as visual strategies for the scientific Narrative was that photography was unable to depict color in the mid-nineteenth century. The volume contained color lithographs , including drawings of icebergs by Wild, accompanied by detailed descriptions such as “the colouring of the southern bergs is magnificent…with a slight bluish tint…On this ground color there are parallel streaks of cobalt blue, of various intensities,” and “the colouring of the crevasses, caves, and hollows is of the deepest and purest azure possible,” clearly written with the aim of invoking the richness of color in the landscapes (Tizard et al. 1885 , 433; Codling 1997 , 193). The Challenger photographs can therefore be argued to have possessed little to no epistemological authority over drawing and painting as visual strategies, which had the advantage of depicting color.

The ability to illustrate color was also important for the anthropological sections of the Narrativ e as well as those parts that described fauna and flora. This is evident foremost in the inclusion of Wild’s colorful sketches of people in Tonga “to show the color of race” and of spears from the Admiralty Islands drawn to depict their “highly decorated” patterns. Footnote 31 Despite the rise of photography in nineteenth-century anthropology and “race science” (scientific racism) the omission of photographs appears not to have limited the scientific value that was attributed to the anthropological parts of the publication: a review of the Narrative in the prestigious journal Science claimed that “the ethnologist will find himself well rewarded for his study of its pages” (Anon 1885 , 15–16). This further suggests that drawings were seen by those on the expedition, and by scientific authorities outside of it, to be just as valuable for science as photography.

4.4 The (In)accessibility of Landscapes

Drawings and paintings not only provided the benefit over photography of depicting color in the Narrative: a further advantage was that certain scenes and objects were more accessible to the artist than to the photographer. Paintings and drawings printed in the volume depicted flora, fauna, and sediments taken from under the ocean as part of the expedition—not only were these printed in color, but they depicted samples that were underwater and therefore could not have been photographed in their natural habitat (Tizard et al. 1885 , 926). Such specimens would have required artistic agency to depict them as accurately as possible, as their appearance and context would have changed upon their removal from the sea. Photography was unable to capture the sediments as if they were in the ocean, while the creative agency employed in drawing and painting enabled such depiction. This provides a further argument as to why drawing and painting were maintained as a scientific visual strategy on the Challenger .

From their use as plates and woodcuts in the Narrative it is clear that the Challenger’s photographs held a function as scientific evidence . But that many of them were printed as reproductions tells us that objectivity was not a significant factor in their use—traditional visual strategies such as drawing and painting were retained for this purpose in order to depict scale and color, and to illustrate specimens that photography was unable to due to inaccessibility. Looking instead at the photographs’ circulation and uses in the wider scientific community points to other reasons that photography was used on the expedition.

5 The Reproduction and Circulation of the Challenger Photographs within Wider Scientific Circles

As well as being published in the Narrative, the Challenger photographs reached other scientific publications in the 1870s as engravings and woodcut reproductions. Focusing upon their reproduction and circulation in these contexts reveals more about why photography was a successful visual strategy on the expedition.

5.1 Speedy Capture and Replication

The photographs’ use in these wider scientific contexts firstly serves as further evidence that photography served to speedily capture and reproduce visuals for their circulation as scientific evidence both during and after the expedition. Footnote 32 In 1876, the journal Nature included woodcut reproductions of photographs from the Challenger of the botany of the Bermudas, in illustration of the gardens rich with tropical vegetation such as Carica papaya trees. Footnote 33 A number of the photographs were also reproduced as woodcuts in Nature to illustrate geological structures including a “Sand-glacier” in Bermuda and indigenous people amongst various landscapes and vegetation types. Footnote 34 This functional benefit of replicability is also evident in Charles Wyville Thomson’s scientific publication The Voyage of the Challenger, which included reproductions of the same photograph of sand glaciers in Bermuda shortly after the expedition. Drawing and painting would not have enabled the quick and simple reproduction of an image for dissemination to more than one scientific publication: in this case, therefore, photography possessed a distinct advantage over other visual strategies. Footnote 35

This appeal of photography in reproducing visual scientific evidence was not limited only to their use in scientific publications, but in the ability to circulate such images amongst those in the wider scientific community during the expedition. Naturalist Willemoes-Suhm, for example, posted photographs from the expedition to zoologists in Europe for their scientific use, having acquired copies of them on board the ship (Willemoes-Suhm 1877 , 27). Likewise naturalist Moseley, in a letter sent to fellow naturalist Joseph D. Hooker early on in the expedition, claimed “I will send you some [photographs] when I get them…Prof Thomson promised to give me a set for that purpose.” Footnote 36 Moseley kept his word: the Proceedings of the Linnean Society stated that its President Joseph Hooker had in a lecture of 1875 “exhibited an extensive series of drawings and photographs taken during the ‘Challenger’ Expedition” whilst a “Professor Dyer, in illustration of Mr. Moseley’s ‘Notes on the Insects and Plants of Kerguelen,’ called attention to a photograph showing the Kerguelen Cabbage ( Pringba antiscorbutica, Br .) in different stages of growth” (Anon 1875b , v). No rationale was given for the use of both photographs and drawings, and it is not known if the drawings were those of Wild or one of the amateur artists or scientists on board the Challenger . But their use further demonstrates that photography was utilized due to its ability to quickly capture and reproduce scenes, which drawing was unable to do. This replicative capacity also enabled Willemoes-Suhm to post photographs home of indigenous people of the Philippines and Tonga on the account of their being “very anthropologically important” and thus to be kept for his later scientific study. Footnote 37

5.2 Saving for Later: Photographs as Templates for Drawing and Painting

The Challenger expedition’s photography also served as a speedy means of capturing and reproducing images for scientific use as templates from which to draw at a later date. One of Moseley’s scientific publications on the inhabitants of the Admiralty Islands used a Challenger photograph from which to sketch people as anthropological illustrations (Moseley 1877 ). Yet another pencil-sketch drawing of a single person was unmistakably copied directly from a group portrait photograph taken on the voyage. Footnote 38 Whilst this drawing could have been made alongside the photographer taking the picture, the identical appearance of the drawing to the photograph—including the angle—and the obvious convenience of being able to capture scenes quickly to use as a template for producing scientific illustrations serves as further indication that the photograph was used for the artist to work with later, at a more convenient time or location. On this basis the appeal of photography for science on the expedition, over drawing and painting, can again be seen as its speed of capture and its replicability.

5.3 Photography as a Printing-Press-in-the-Field

Photography on the Challenger also functioned as a strategy for capturing, replicating, and disseminating drawings for various scientific publications, operating as what Ryan has defined as a “printing-press-in-the-field” (Ryan 1997 , 79). This was a deliberate and regular practice on the Challenger : Willemoes-Suhm claimed in a letter to his mother “The artist Mr Wild has drawn the laboratory, which was then photographed, but I do not send it to you because it will soon be displayed in Thomson's letter to ‘Nature.’” Footnote 39 Wild’s drawing of Euplectella subarea, which was printed as a reproduction in Nature (Fig.  9.6 ), is identical to one of the Challenger photographs, further revealing the use of photography as a “printing-press” to be a functional benefit that was deliberately utilized on the voyage for replicating and circulating visual evidence for wider scientific use both during and after the expedition.

A drawing by Wild of “Euplectella subarea” (Drawing in Anon, “The Cruise of the Challenger” 1876 , 93–94. Corresponding to photograph ship no. 28, original in Album one of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0174, n.p.)

Although traditional means of visual depiction including drawing and painting were utilized for depiction of scale, perspective, color, and inaccessible specimens, by functioning as a speedy method of capturing and reproducing scenes for circulation, and as a “printing-press-in-the-field” for drawings, photography offered additional flexibility for the purposes of scientific evidence during and after the expedition. This leads this chapter to its next question: Did the purpose and success of photography on the Challenger even extend past both the “artistic” and “scientific”?

6 Personal Circulation and Use of the Challenger Photographs

The quick and simple replicability of photographs, as highlighted earlier in this chapter, provided not only scientific benefits: it also enabled multiple individual copies to be printed on board the Challenger . The photographs were distributed to crew members during the voyage for their personal use, as single copies at sixpence each, or one shilling for a second copy. Footnote 40 Schwartz has detailed how photographs were used in the nineteenth-century as a means of narration, personal memory, and for sharing experiences with friends and family, which is also something that we see in these photos collected on the Challenger expedition (Schwartz 2000 , 19–21). Narrative accounts in the crew’s journals correlate with much of the photographic content, the range of subjects of the photographs revealing a chronological visual representation of the expedition. A photograph of Captain Thomson with people of the Admiralty Islands (Fig.  9.7 ) can be viewed in this way since its composition provides limited basis for comparative anthropological analysis, instead appearing more to be a narrative or novelty photograph. That Willemoes-Suhm sent home photographs of Malaysian huts and people to narrate his experiences to his family also demonstrates their wider subjective interpretation and function as personal souvenirs from the expedition, in addition to highlighting their advantage of replicability for wider circulation. Footnote 41

Photograph of Captain Thomson with people from the Admiralty Islands (ship no. 349, original in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0175, n.p.)

6.1 Personal Albums and Journals

A number of the Challenger photographs were used in the personal albums and journals of several of both the naval and civilian scientific staff, including those of botanist Moseley, naturalist Willemoes-Suhm, chemist Buchanan, assistant paymaster John Hynes, Navigating Lieutenant Tizard, ship carpenter Robert Higham, and Lieutenant Carpenter. Many of the photographs also appear in more than one of the albums, again demonstrating the advantage of replicability that made photography such a successful visual strategy on the Challenger expedition. In these albums the photographs were also flexible enough to take on a multitude of meanings and uses: the personal use of the Challenger photographs was varied in these albums and journals, and included those purchased or received as gifts as well as those taken by the official expedition photographers. Footnote 42 Some front-and-profile portraits were used specifically to describe “types” of male and female indigenous people from and anthropological perspective, as can be seen in the album of Lieutenant Carpenter (Willemoes-Suhm 1877 , 146–148). Footnote 43 In others they were used more decoratively, as in the album of Hynes, which combined front and profile portraits of Hawaiian and Japanese people at right angles to each other with no clear intention of anthropological comparison. Footnote 44 The photographs therefore took on a range of subjective meanings and interpretations once circulating for the personal use of those on board the expedition.

These case studies tell us that the Challenger photographs were manifestly valued as flexible material objects that were capable of multiple uses and interpretations. A recently-discovered photograph album and seven journals incorporating photographs belonging to expedition Paymaster Richard Routley Adams Richards—including new photographs not yet incorporated into the Brunton catalogue—reveal yet more about their use. Footnote 45 In Richards’ album and journals the Challenger photographs did not necessarily replace other forms of visualization when it came to creating personal narratives of the expedition, but were used alongside drawings, paintings, and other visual items such as train timetables and tickets. The photographs were enclosed alongside annotations and written accounts as a means of illustrating a narrative of the expedition, and spanned a range of themes including people, landscapes and vegetation, Chinese architecture, and hieroglyphics on wood—indicating how the photographs could be used in varied ways depending on the person’s preferences, memories, and creative agency.

Richards also included in his album a photograph of one of Wild’s drawings of icebergs. Footnote 46 Other photographs of artist Wild’s drawings, such as that of Euplectella subarea (discussed earlier in this chapter) were included too in Hynes’ personal album. Footnote 47 For personal albums too the function of the Challenger’s photography as a “printing-press-in-the-field” is evident as a benefit over drawing and painting that made it a worthwhile and successful visual strategy on the expedition. Looking at these personal albums and correspondences therefore shows us how the success of the Challenger’s photographic practice can be attributed to the flexibility of photography and of the photographs themselves. Considering the even wider scientific, social, political, and economic context of the expedition in the next and final part of this chapter provides further insights into photographic strategies on the Challenger as well as their connections to each other.

7 Complex Interplays: The Challenger , Science, and Society

The photographs from the Challenger found themselves circulating even more widely than these personal and scientific circles, both during and after the voyage. This should come as no surprise: the use of photographs for public communication, education, and entertainment—in newspaper articles, popular accounts, public lantern shows, and museum exhibitions—was a common practice in Britain at the time of the voyage. Correspondingly, looking closely at photographic practices on the Challenger expedition begins to uncover a complex interplay between science, economy, imperial politics, and public communication—also revealing how science itself was embedded in its wider social contexts in the nineteenth century, and that “objectivity” was not necessarily the sole aim even of its scientific photography (Corbey 1993 ; Schwartz 1996 , 33; Maxwell 2000 , 27; Ryan 2013 , 12–13).

7.1 Photography as a Printing Press for Public Communication

During the expedition, photography served as a “printing press” with which to replicate and disseminate drawings and paintings not only for private and scientific use but also into the British public sphere. The Illustrated London News is an example of a national news outlet that published drawings accompanying accounts of the Challenger expedition throughout its voyage. One of these drawings was produced from a photograph taken of a sketch by Wild that depicted the ship at St. Paul’s Rocks—part of the Atlantic’s Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago—in 1873 (Anon 1873 , 412–414) (Fig.  9.8 ). Footnote 48 Another woodcut image of the ship amongst rocks at Christmas Island, Kerguelen harbor in 1874 was also printed in the newspaper, having been replicated through photography on the voyage—these are only two examples of the photographs’ multiple uses and formats (Anon 1874 , 505). The image of St Paul’s Rocks was deliberately composed to illustrate the experience of boats being “sent off with a lot of whale line” for a loop “to be passed round one of the rocks” for landing (Anon 1873 , 414).The drawing also illustrated the description of the “strong current” and “heavy surf…of from 5 ft. to 7ft.” experienced by the ship’s crew (Anon 1873 , 414). These examples provide further reason to believe that drawing was useful as a visual strategy on the Challenger because the ship could not be depicted at sea through photography. What photography instead made possible was that both of these sketches would be replicated in order for Wild to disseminate them to newspapers to be published: the Illustrated London News claimed in its print to be “indebted to [Wild] for the photographs ” and accompanying accounts (Anon 1875a , 590–591). Footnote 49

“The Challenger at St. Paul's Rocks,” in the  Illustrated London News  (ship no. 136, original in Album one of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0174, n.p.)

Some of the photographs also reached the wider public sphere during the voyage as reproductions in Thomson’s Letters from H.M.S. Challenger (1874), which appeared in the popular monthly anthology Good Words —a magazine directed at Britain’s lower middle classes that included religious material, fiction, and science articles. This case can be seen as connected to the phenomenon of “armchair travel” that was popular in the nineteenth century, and of the increasing communication of science to a wider public (Schwartz 1996 , 33). Reproductions of the photographs used in the publication ranged from scenes of vegetation, such as Kerguelen cabbages to depict botanical specimens, and of Thomson himself on Kerguelen Island. Footnote 50 The Bermudas, Azores, and other destinations were also featured to illustrate Thomson’s narrative of the voyage, including anecdotes of indigenous people, findings of botanical specimens, and his own particular ventures during the expedition. Footnote 51 Photography on the Challenger thus functioned as a means of reproducing and disseminating illustrations for the public communication of the voyage to the British public during the expedition—not coincidentally at a time when its government also sought to communicate its exploration and colonial empire-building activities more widely.

7.2 Use in Popular Accounts of the Challenger Expedition

Such practices of dissemination continued after the Challenger expedition, when the photographs were used more extensively in popular accounts of the voyage. Once again photography functioned as a speedy method of capturing scenes to be used as templates for later artistic depiction: artist Wild’s popular account of the voyage At Anchor (1878) included drawings of King George and Queen Charlotte of the Friendly Islands, which were unmistakably copied in pencil from the Challenger photographs (Wild 1878 , 90) (Fig.  9.9 ). Since Wild had other responsibilities as the Challenger secretary, and  as he seems to have utilized very little of his artistic skill or agency in these drawings, it can be assumed that some photographs were intentionally taken for his later use as a template, so as to prevent distortion of the view from his memory. This speedy capture and replicability further enabled other popular accounts to include reproductions of the Challenger photographs after the expedition, including Spry’s The Cruise of Her Majesty's Ship Challenger (1877), which depicted the ship’s workrooms, town architecture, and the people of the Polynesian island of Tongatabu. Footnote 52

Photographs of King George and Queen Charlotte (ship no. 247 and 248, original in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0175, n.p.)

7.3 Adding Popular Appeal to the Official Narrative

As well as using the Challenger photographs for its scientific purposes, the official Report’s Narrative also printed them as plates, seemingly to convey a sense of adventure in the expedition that might have been intended to appeal to a more general audience. One photograph taken from on board the ship depicted indigenous peoples on a canoe, who had brought a gift of a green turtle to Captain Nares, whilst another was used to depict a “wide flat expanse of hardened lava” at the Kilauae volcano, Mauna Loa (Tizard et al. 1885 , 506–507, 767). Footnote 53 The description of being “struck with the strange appearance of the wonderful termite hills” on approach to Albany Pass, Somerset, Cape York was also illustrated with a photograph, and another of Bisayan Houses, Samboangan was used to demonstrate the “condition” and “impossibility” of their architecture (Tizard et al. 1885 , 532, 660). Footnote 54 The “unusual” Ki Doulan Mohammedan Mosque was similarly illustrated as an example of architecture through a Challenger photograph that was accompanied in the Narrative by the description of “a curious development of the high-peaked Malay roof into a sort of half tower, half spire” in Ki Doulan. Footnote 55 Further flexibility in the photographs’ use can be seen in those of icebergs, which accompanied descriptions of the navigational problems that the captain experienced trying to get around them rather than communicating scientific information (Tizard et al. 1885 , 396–405). Footnote 56 This ability to use the photographs to communicate the “wonder” of a scientific expedition to a wider audience was a particular benefit of the visual strategy on the voyage that further demonstrates the connection between the scientific value of the photographs with their popular use.

7.4 The Photographs as Commodities

Adding a further dimension of complexity to the story of visual culture on the Challenger is that the photographs from the expedition also functioned as saleable “commodities” to be used for economic benefit. During the voyage, 479 of the photographs were circulated as part of an Official Album, which was used to impress visiting dignitaries and circulated individually as gifts to onshore hosts, such as in New Zealand (Brunton 2004 , 17–19). Following the voyage they continued to circulate as commodities through the Edinburgh photographic company J. Horsburgh and Sons by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (Ryan 1997 , 33). Footnote 57 This circulation began in 1885—strategically in the same year as the publication of the Narrative , indicating a specific intention to capitalize on the photographs as the story of the Challenger reached a wider public audience. Footnote 58 Such “saleable” features included those of indigenous people in groups and as front and profile portraits, crew on board the ship, volcanoes, and icebergs, and local and colonial architecture including homes, temples, and churches. Footnote 59 The photographs adopted a range of formats: they could be purchased from the Horsburgh catalogue as single 8” × 6” unmounted copies, a set of “any 50” unmounted copies, and a complete set of 350 either unmounted, mounted on linen with alphabetical index bound in French morocco, or bound in Turkey morocco with “extra finish.” Footnote 60 Purchasers also had the option of buying “outside size” copies of 15” × 11” and any photograph in platinotype for twenty-five per cent extra, in carbon for 33½ per cent extra, as enlarged or reduced copies, “or any special fancy” requested. Footnote 61 Individual photographs came at a cost of £0.1.0, or one could pay up to £18.18.0 for the complete set; they could also be purchased as transparencies “for Lantern Exhibitions” at an unspecified cost. Footnote 62 In being sold for economic means in such a wide variety of formats the Challenger photographs fit the earlier tradition of sketches and paintings being sold as prints to accompany scientific works and illustrated books of travel, whilst also being valuable themselves as commodities and making them adaptable to wider public and scientific use (Jacobs 1995 , 16).

7.5 Subjective Interpretations: The Commodified Photographs Return to Science and the Public

Intriguingly, through their commercial circulation through the Horsburgh catalogue the Challenger photographs found themselves additional scientific uses—where the scientific meaning attributed to them became further relative to the perspective of the observers in the different contexts in which they were used. A number of photographs purchased from the catalogue were published as plates in Alfred Russel Wallace’s Studies Scientific and Social (1900) in which they were used to illustrate racial “types” of people at a time when “race science” (scientific racism) was being established as a discipline (Wallace 1900 , 457). Footnote 63 Wallace acquired the photographs of indigenous Api, Hawaiian, and Tahitian men and women specifically for his study. Footnote 64 Despite taking them from a commercial catalogue, Wallace’s use of the photographs for “scientific” purposes, which he utilized alongside photographs taken by the Anthropological Institute, indicates that he deemed them equally appropriate as scientific evidence: he declared alongside two of the Challenger of the photographs in the book their capacity to “sufficiently show the general character” of his subjects (Wallace 1900 , 406). Owing to developments in printing technology by the date that Studies Scientific and Social was published, the photographs could be printed as plates rather than reproductions, which also arguably increased their value as evidence for racialized “scientific” thinking. Footnote 65 Here we see a multifaceted connection between the economic use of the Challenger photographs with their value as scientific evidence, which could be used to further investigate the use of science and visual culture to both rationalize and sensationalize British science, exploration, colonialism, and racism in the nineteenth century.

7.6 Public Communication of Scientific Racism

Revealing further intricate connections between photographs as commodity, scientific evidence, and wider public communication in the nineteenth century, the Challenger photographs also reached the British Museum’s (Natural History) exhibition “Races of Mankind” in the early twentieth century through the commercial route of the Horsburgh catalogue. Footnote 66 Used to legitimize scientific racism to the public, several front and profile portrait photographs of Polynesian, Fuegian, Melanesian, and Japanese men and women were displayed as framed exhibits, while others appeared in the exhibition guidebook to illustrate racial “types.” Footnote 67 Their use in this way also placed the photographs in an “ethnographic showcase” context that was typical of the “edutainment” popular amongst the British public in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Footnote 68 The exhibition received mixed responses: the Museums Journal praised the exhibition and guidebook’s entertainment value on the basis of its “excellent” photographs on public display. On the other hand, Man: A Monthly Record of Anthropological Science  criticized both the exhibition and guidebook for their scientific inaccuracy and irrelevance to anthropologists, nevertheless claiming “the plates are of considerable interest, and are worth preserving” (Anon 1909a , 1–2, b , 59). This suggests that the photographs themselves were considered valuable for use as scientific evidence, but that their interpretation and use in this context of public education and entertainment that Man considered to not be sufficiently scientifically rigorous. Again we see here how the Challenger photographs were able to take on different subjective meanings and uses following their circulation.

Through their distribution through the Horsburgh catalogue the Challenger photographs undoubtedly reached other destinations—homes, “scientific” research, public display—and will have been used and interpreted in a multiplicity of ways. In addition to the various visual strategies and scientific and personal uses, this further reflects the multiple functions of the Challenger photography and its complex interplay between science, society, and visual culture in the nineteenth century that extends past photographic “objectivity.”

8 Flexibility: Challenger Photographs, Science, and Society in the Nineteenth Century

This chapter has highlighted how a historiographical theory that nineteenth-century photography became important for science due to its perceived potential as “objective” visual evidence is not strictly supported by the Challenger ’s maritime experience, nor is it evident in the expedition’s extensive written and published record. The background to the expedition demonstrates that photographic practice on the voyage was not conducive to “objective” scientific image-making: the Challenger utilized several official photographers, none of whom were known to be trained for scientific purposes (but some who were trained by the military), and photographs acquired as gifts and purchases were also incorporated into the collection. In fact it was incredibly difficult to make objective photos on the Challeng er due to the conditions of the voyage. Traditions in art also shaped the Challenger ’s photographic aesthetics, giving them an epistemic authority that extended outside of the “scientific.” This builds upon arguments as to the undue simplicity of defining photography’s success in nineteenth-century science to have been on account of its perceived “objectivity.”

The case of the Challenger expedition therefore shows that, for photography to be used in this context, it must have been valuable for other reasons. Photography was indeed a successful method of visual depiction as scientific evidence on the expedition , despite the fact that drawings and paintings were used to serve a multitude of scientific functions including depicting scale, color, patterns, and objects in difficult-to-reach places such as specimens from under the sea, which photography was unable to achieve. The functional benefits of photography instead included speed of capture, reproducibility, and as a “printing-press-in-the-field” for drawings and paintings. All of these functions were advantageous in the creation and circulation of the Challenger ’s visual scientific evidence.

These functional benefits of photography also applied to non-scientific contexts—including their personal uses and in popular written accounts, and for public entertainment and education. In some cases the photographs themselves were used, but they also served as visual templates for drawing and painting. Utilized too for economic benefit, upon their commercial circulation they went on to find multiple additional uses and interpretations, as scientific books, public entertainment, and exhibitions. Photography on the Challenger therefore achieved success not only on account of its supposed “objectivity,” but owing to its flexibility as a visual strategy, also revealing a multiplicity of connections between visual culture, science, economy, imperial politics, and British society in the nineteenth century.

The Challenger expedition therefore serves as an excellent case study towards a deeper understanding of visual culture in science, exploration, and society in the nineteenth century. Additional research should be directed towards the many other photographs from the Challenger not referenced in this chapter, and incorporating the new photographs found through this study into the catalogue. Other questions include: How does the Challenger ’s visual strategies compare to those of other voyages of exploration, in the nineteenth century and during other time periods? Did changing technology alter the possible uses and interpretations of the expedition’s photographs? How were the photographs further used for legitimizing and communicating scientific ideas to the public and within research communities—and how were they then interpreted? Taking a broader perspective: What more can photographic practices, including those on the Challenger , tell us about the complex relationships between visual culture, science, exploration, economy, politics, and society in the nineteenth-century?

See also (Haworth-Booth 1984 , 114) regarding the training of photographers from 1855 by the Royal Engineers for the purpose of surveying; (Brunton 2004 , 16–18) and the Quarterly ledger of HMS Challenger , 15 Nov. 1872–1831 Dec. 1873, Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies, National Archives, London, ADM 117/196, n.p.

See also Captain Nares’ log books regarding the names of photographers (George Nares’ ship's log, 1873–1876, Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies, National Archives, London, ADM 53/10536, n.p.). In his journal, Lieutenant Pelham Aldrich wrote about the presence of a new photographer, Hodgeson, on board in December 1873 in accordance with these dates (Journal of Pelham Aldrich on HMS Challenger , 1873–1874, Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society, London, ar PEA/2, f.47r). The supposed existence of only one photographer at a time is however complicated by Aldrich and Balfour’s journal descriptions of the presence of more than one on board in January and November 1873, whilst the official artist, Wild, himself inferred some involvement with the photographic process (Journal of Andrew Balfour from HMS Challenger , 1873–1874, Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society, London, mg ABA/1, n.p.; Diary of JJ Wild, 1872–1876, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, Murray Col. Section 1.7 (Volume 2), f. 74r.).

Purchased from Hopkin and Williams on September 30, 1874 (Detailed account of scientific apparatus, chemicals, philosophical & mathl. instruments, drawing materials, stationery etc. etc. on board H.M.S. “Challenger” for the service of the scientific staff of the circum navigation expedition, 1872, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, Murray Col. Section 1, No. 49, n.p.).

The negative size is evident in the glass negatives—which are whole plates—and in the purchase of half plates in the inventory, in addition to the original photographs which would have been developed in the same size as the plates and are of both half and full size (Detailed account of scientific apparatus 1872, n.p.; also through discussion and with thanks to Dr Michael Pritchard of the Royal Photographic Society). Photographs as measured in the Carpenter album (Photograph album of Alfred Carpenter 1872–1876, n.p.).

Detailed account of scientific apparatus 1872, n.p.; (Brunton 2004 , 19–20).

Journal of John Hynes on HMS Challenger , Dec. 1873–Mar. 1874, Caird Library, National Maritime Museum, London, JOD/15/1, f. 104r; Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

This poor quality can be seen in several photographs, such as the photo depicting “Natives in canoe” in Humboldt Bay, New Guinea (ship no. 344, in Journal two of Richard Routley Adams Richards on Board HMS Challenger, 1872–1876, Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society, London, RRR/2, n.p.). Photograph ship no. 390 also depicts people within a blurred landscape (in Photograph Album of Thomas Henry Tizard, 1873–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0859, n.p.). Wild was employed as both artist and private secretary to the Director of Scientific Staff, Dr. Charles Wyville Thomson, a dual role that was common of expedition artists (Codling 1997 , 193; Rice and Bellamy 2000 , 293).

The glass negative for ship no. 436a, of Fuegian people, shows evidence of have been produced by the wet collodion method, including patterns of solution running down the plate, silvering around its edges, and grains fixed to the viscous wet collodion. Although it cannot be confirmed without detailed chemical analysis, the negative for photograph ship no. 439, a landscape of the Falkland Islands taken on the next stop of the voyage, lacks these features, suggesting it to have been produced using a dry plate process. Glass negatives from Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, Murray Col., reference codes as per ship no. Established using McCabe, “Preservation of 19th-Century Negatives.” With thanks to Dr Michael Pritchard of the Royal Photographic Society for advice.

For further information about the wet collodion and dry plate processes, see (Davenport 1991 , 22).

The photographs can be attributed to ship nos. 247–248, originals in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Photographs’ origins described by Rudolf von Willemoes-Suhm, Challenger-Briefe (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1877 , 172). These photographs are attributable to ship nos. 353 and 355 (originals in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.).

Brunton, The Challenger Expedition, photo no. 726 (original in Photograph album of Alfred Carpenter, 1872–1876, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, Murray Col. MSS CAR, n.p.).

Named ‘the Alloways’ (Journal of Andrew Balfour from HMS Challenger 1873–1874, n.p.).

See also (Brunton 2004 , ship nos. 243a, 313–315), which labels the photographers as a Mr Travers and Mr D.L. Mundy, respectively. For details relating to Travers see (Shepherd 2007; Willemoes-Suhm 1877 , 108–109), specifically describing their acquisition from Mr Travers (originals in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.).

For example ship no. 435a in Album three of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes, 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0176, n.p.

Photographs in (Smith 1985 ) include ship nos. 267, 267a, 267b, 267c (originals in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.).

Herd of Buffaloes, at The Victoria Falls, Zambezi River (1862) by John Thomas Baines (Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society, London, S0012338). See also analysis in (Butlin 2005 , 19).

See e.g., Photograph of a Village, Admiralty Islands (ship no. 351, in Journal two of Richard Routley Adams Richards 1872–1876, n.p.).

Specifically on icebergs see (Potter 2007 , 3–13; Mifflin 2011 ).

Photographs of icebergs include ship no. 179, the original of which can be found in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876 (Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0175, n.p).

For example ship no. 349 in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Government buildings in Honolulu were taken as per ship no. 392 in Album three of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p. Churches are depicted in photo no. 842 in Photograph album of Alfred Carpenter 1872–1876, n.p.

Ship no. 410 in Photograph album of Alfred Carpenter 1872–1876, n.p.

For example, ship nos. 382 and 383 in Album three of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Unconfirmed minutes of the Royal Society, November 14, 1872. Library, Art and Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, London, JDH1/14/1, f. 5r.

The Narrative (1885) was written by Challenger Staff Commander Thomas Tizard and its scientific crew members Henry Nottidge Moseley, J.Y. Buchanan, and John Murray.

See (Mills 2003 , 345–346) regarding the importance of Kerguelen.

Drawing by Willemoes-Suhm of “ Polycheles crucifera… twice the natural size. From 450 fathoms, off Sombrero, West Indies” (Tizard et al. 1885 , 523). The camera lucida was used as a means of creating traceable images of objects to achieve accurate perspective (Davenport 1991 , xiii). See also Detailed account of scientific apparatus 1872, n.p.

Detailed account of scientific apparatus 1872, n.p.; (Brunton 2004 , 16; Codling 1997 , 193).

Letter from C. Wyville Thomson to Ctn Evans, 8 Jan. 1875, Library, Art and Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, London, JDH1/14/2, ff.169–170r–v.

See “Various Dancing Costumes worn at Nakello, Fiji; a Tongan to show the color of the race” (Tizard et al. 1885 , 503) and “Admiralty Islands. Unusually large and highly decorated obsidian bladed spears” (Tizard et al. 1885 , 710).

See (Hamber 1990 ) regarding the common printing in newspapers of photographs as reproductions, since it was not possible to print them directly due to the technological limitations of the mid-nineteenth century.

Reproduction of ship no. 64 in (Anon 1876 , 97–99), original in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Ship no. 80 in (Anon 1876 , 97–100); original in Photograph Album of Thomas Henry Tizard 1873–1876, n.p.

Ship nos. 61, 80 in (Thomson 1878 , 290–291); originals in Album one of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes, 1872–1876, Historic Photographs and Ships Plans Collection, National Maritime Museum, London, ALB0174, n.p., and in Photograph Album of Thomas Henry Tizard 1873–1876, n.p., respectively.

Letter from Henry Moseley to Joseph Hooker, August 3 1873, Library, Art and Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, London, JDH1/14/1, f. 82r–v.

Translated from German, “sind anthropologisch sehr wichtig” (Willemoes-Suhm, Challenger-Briefe , 111, 146–148: p. 146).

Photograph of Admiralty Islanders in Photograph ship no. 348, original in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p. For the corresponding drawing see (Moseley 1877 , pl. XIII).

Translated from German: “Das Laboratorium hat der Artist Mr. Wild gezeichnet, und dasselbe ist dann photographiert worden; ich sende es Euch nicht, weil es demnächst in einem Briefe Thomsons in»Nature« abgebildet wird” (Willemoes-Suhm 1877 , 21). Author’s translation.

Letter from Henry Moseley to Joseph Hooker 3 Aug. 1873, f. 82rv. See (Brunton 2004 , 15).

For example on staying with indigenous people in the Malaysian Archipelago, describing staying in a ‘camp’ in the forest, at the foot of a small hill, where mats were spread out among huge palm leaves (Willemoes-Suhm 1877 , 108–177).

(Brunton 2004 ) has catalogued the albums, and further details can be found on pages 1–23. The photographs in these personal albums and journals do not display the government copyright stamp added after the expedition, indicating them to have been acquired during the voyage.

Photograph album of Alfred Carpenter 1872–1876, n.p.

Album three of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

A photograph album belonging Bromley is also omitted from the Brunton catalogue, but its content and whereabouts are unknown (Logbooks, photographs and microscope slides kept by Bromley during Challenger's voyage, 1872–1876, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, Murray Col. MSS Bro 1, n.p.). For Richards photographs, see Journals 1–7 of Richard Routley Adams Richards on Board HMS Challenger, 1872–1876, Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society, London, RRR/1–7 and Photograph Album of Richard Routley Adams Richards, 1872–1876, Foyle Reading Room, Royal Geographical Society, London, RRR/8.

New Photograph of a Drawing of Antarctic Icebergs , with the Signature of J.J. Wild (in Photograph Album of Richard Routley Adams Richards 1872–1876, n.p.).

For example ship no. 28 in Album one of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Photograph corresponds to ship no. 136, original in Album one of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Ship nos. 136 and 228c, original in Album one of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Ship 220–221 and 223, 228a respectively in (Thomson 1874c , 744–745).

See for example reproductions in (Thomson 1874a , 94–102; b , 381–387).

Ship nos. 1, 33, 30, 91, 253 in (Spry 1877 , 9, 25, 59, 61, 178) respectively. Originals in Album two of Assistant Paymaster John Hynes 1872–1876, n.p.

Photograph ship nos. 269 and 400 on pages 508, 767, respectively.

Ship nos. 270 and 337 respectively.

Building in a Village in Ki Doulan; ship no. 279a (Tizard et al. 1885 , 555).

Ship no. 177a on page 404.

Horsburgh catalogue of the photographic negatives taken during the challenger expedition, 1885, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, Murray Col. Section 5, No. 47, ff. 1–12.

Horsburgh catalogue 1885, ff. 1–12.

Horsburgh catalogue 1885, f. 12.

Including front and profile portraits of men and women on Tahiti, and a man from Api, New Hebrides corresponding to ship nos. 380, 383, 405, 403, 295 respectively. The photographs are likely to have been purchased from the Horsburgh catalogue since they were found stored in Wallace’s personal archives with a translucent envelope printed “J. Horsburgh & Son.” See Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers re. Studies Scientific and Social, 1852–1905, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London WP6/6/6, ff. 1–12; Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers re. Studies Scientific and Social, 1852–1905, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, WP6/6/7, ff. 9–14.

Russel Wallace stated this specifically in a letter to his daughter regarding the photographs he had collected for the book. In Letter from Alfred Russel Wallace to Violet Wallace, 18 Nov. 1899, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, WP/1/2/124, n.p.

See (Hamber 1990 ) regarding the printing of photographs as reproductions. See also (Codling 1997 , 205–206) relating to the improvements in printing technology.

Some of the exhibition photographs attributed to the Challenger are not in the Brunton catalogue, and may be further additions to the photographic collection. The photograph exhibits are labeled ‘Challenger Expedition,’ therefore linking them to the collection. It might be that the photographs were mislabeled as such, and their identification should be an area of further research.

Ship nos. 354, 377, 382, 404, 435, 436, 436a, and photo no. 769 in Photographic Collection, Undated, Natural History Museum Library and Archives, London, DF PAL/143, ff. 112–115, 121, 123–124, 151, 162–163r; Ship no. 435 and 435a in Richard Lydekker’s guide to the specimens illustrating the ‘Races of mankind,’ 1908, Natural History Museum, London, DF PUB/516/1/1, n.p.

The government copyright stamp is not visible on the photographs, which have been cropped, but on account of the increased size and format for display they were likely to have been purchased through the Horsburgh catalogue for this purpose (Photographic Collection, Undated, ff. 112–115, 121, 123–124, 151, 162–163r).

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Tucker, Jennifer. 1997. Photography as witness, detective, and impostor: Visual representation in Victorian science. In Victorian science in context , ed. Bernard Lightman, 378–408. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Wilder, Kelley. 2009. Photography and science . London: Reaktion.

Yonge, Maurice. 1972. The inception and significance of the Challenger expedition. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (B) 72: 1–13.

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Acknowledgments

With thanks to the reviewers and editors of this volume; to staff of the library and archives at the National Archives, National Maritime Museum, Natural History Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and Royal Geographical Society in London for assistance in finding sources; to Dr. Michael Pritchard of the Royal Photographic Society for providing invaluable expertise; to Simon Werrett in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) department at University College London (UCL) for your support and advice during my MSc; to friends and colleagues at the Rachel Carson Center and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in particular the library team; and to my family, without whom this project wouldn’t have been realized.

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Hood, S.L. (2023). Science, Photography, and Objectivity? Exploring Nineteenth-Century Visual Cultures through the HMS Challenger Expedition (1872–1876). In: Valleriani, M., Giannini, G., Giannetto, E. (eds) Scientific Visual Representations in History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11317-8_9

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Cook's First Voyage

First voyage of captain james cook.

(1768 - 1771)

James Cook’s first voyage circumnavigated the globe in the ship Endeavour , giving the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander the opportunity to collect plants from previously unexplored habitats. Although the Endeavour voyage was officially a journey to Tahiti to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun, it also had a more clandestine mission from the Royal Society to explore the South Pacific in the name of England. The two botanists on the expedition returned with a collection of plant specimens including an estimated 100 new families and 1,000 new species of plants, many of which are currently housed in the U. S. National Herbarium.

Joseph Banks, who would later become Sir Joseph Banks and president of the Royal Society, was a wealthy young scientist. He invited his close friend Daniel Solander, a Swedish student of Linnaeus working in the natural history collections of the British Museum, to join him on the Endeavour expedition. Together they acted as the naturalists on the voyage, commanding several servants and artists, including Sydney Parkinson, and outfitted with an excellent array of scientific equipment. After setting out from London, the expedition stopped briefly at Madeira, a small Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean, and then continued on to Rio de Janiero, on the eastern coast of Brazil. Here, the expedition encountered one of its first major setbacks when the Portuguese governor Dom Antonio Rolim de Moura Tavare refused to allow anyone from the Endeavour to come on land except to acquire necessities. This restriction, however, didn’t stop the two determined botanists. Banks and Solander risked being arrested as spies or smugglers in order to sneak onshore to collect specimens around the city. Despite this difficulty, the expedition traveled on to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, where they collected a large number of specimens despite bitterly cold weather that killed two members of the crew. In April of 1769, the expedition reached Tahiti, where they stayed until July. During this time, Banks and Solander collected over 250 plant species, including the orchids Liparis revoluta and Oberonia equitans (also known as Oberonia disticha ) and the flowering plant Ophiorrhiza solandri , in the first extensive botanical study in Polynesia.

After viewing the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769, the expedition began mapping, exploring, and collecting specimens in the relatively unknown regions of New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia (then called New Holland). Plants collected included the large orchid Dendrobium cunninghamii , also known as Winika cunninghamii , native to the western shore of New Zealand, as well as white-honeysuckle ( Banksia integrifolia ), native to the east coast of Australia. The Endeavour stopped for nine days at a bay on the coast of Australia, where, according to Banks, the expedition’s plant collection became “so immensely large that it was necessary that some extraordinary care should be taken of them least they should spoil.” The botanists were so successful that Cook decided to name the place Botany Bay in honor of their extensive discoveries.

The Endeavour continued its voyage mapping the eastern coast of Australia, narrowly avoiding shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef, until it re-entered known waters near New Guinea in late August, 1770. During the last part of the voyage, the Endeavour stopped at the disease-ridden city of Batavia in Java and at the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, returning to England in July, 1771. Overall, the expedition was very successful, with little strife among the crew and no deaths from scurvy. Although neither Banks nor Solander published their botanical findings, the two naturalists returned to England with a vast wealth of new discoveries.

References:

Adams, Brian. The Flowering of the Pacific . Sydney: William Collins Pty, 1986. Allen, Oliver E. The Pacific Navigators . Canada: Time-Life Books, 1980. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) database, http://gbif.org/ (for information on plant species Dendrobium cunninghamii ; accessed June 15, 2010). Ebes, Hank. The Florilegium of Captain Cook’s First Voyage to Australia: 1768-1771 . Melbourne: Ebes Douwma Antique Prints and Maps, 1988. Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) database, http://www.eol.org/ (for information on plant species Oberonia disticha and Dendrobium cunninghamii ; accessed June 15, 2010). Merrill, Elmer Drew. The Botany of Cook’s Voyages and its Unexpected Significance in Relation to Anthropology, Biogeography and History . Waltham, Massachusetts: Chronica Botanica Co., 1954. O’Brian, Patrick. Joseph Banks: A Life . Boston: David R. Gardine, Publisher, 1993. Rauchenberg, Roy A. “Daniel Carl Solander: Naturalist on the ‘Endeavour’,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society , New Series, 58, no. 8 (1968): 1-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1006027 (May 26, 2010). National Library of Australia. “South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pacific.” South Seas , n.d. http://southseas.nla.gov.au/ . Contains maps and text of expedition journals by James Cook and Joseph Banks. USDA PLANTS database. United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. National Plant Data Center. http://plants.usda.gov/ (for information on plant species Banksia integrifolia ; accessed June 15, 2010).

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Voyager 1 transmitting data again after Nasa remotely fixes 46-year-old probe

Engineers spent months working to repair link with Earth’s most distant spacecraft, says space agency

Earth’s most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, has started communicating properly again with Nasa after engineers worked for months to remotely fix the 46-year-old probe.

Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which makes and operates the agency’s robotic spacecraft, said in December that the probe – more than 15bn miles (24bn kilometres) away – was sending gibberish code back to Earth.

In an update released on Monday , JPL announced the mission team had managed “after some inventive sleuthing” to receive usable data about the health and status of Voyager 1’s engineering systems. “The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again,” JPL said. Despite the fault, Voyager 1 had operated normally throughout, it added.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was designed with the primary goal of conducting close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn in a five-year mission. However, its journey continued and the spacecraft is now approaching a half-century in operation.

Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012, making it the first human-made object to venture out of the solar system. It is currently travelling at 37,800mph (60,821km/h).

Hi, it's me. - V1 https://t.co/jgGFBfxIOe — NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) April 22, 2024

The recent problem was related to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, which are responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it is sent to Earth. Unable to repair a broken chip, the JPL team decided to move the corrupted code elsewhere, a tricky job considering the old technology.

The computers on Voyager 1 and its sister probe, Voyager 2, have less than 70 kilobytes of memory in total – the equivalent of a low-resolution computer image. They use old-fashioned digital tape to record data.

The fix was transmitted from Earth on 18 April but it took two days to assess if it had been successful as a radio signal takes about 22 and a half hours to reach Voyager 1 and another 22 and a half hours for a response to come back to Earth. “When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on 20 April, they saw that the modification worked,” JPL said.

Alongside its announcement, JPL posted a photo of members of the Voyager flight team cheering and clapping in a conference room after receiving usable data again, with laptops, notebooks and doughnuts on the table in front of them.

The Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who flew two space shuttle missions and acted as commander of the International Space Station, compared the JPL mission to long-distance maintenance on a vintage car.

“Imagine a computer chip fails in your 1977 vehicle. Now imagine it’s in interstellar space, 15bn miles away,” Hadfield wrote on X . “Nasa’s Voyager probe just got fixed by this team of brilliant software mechanics.

Voyager 1 and 2 have made numerous scientific discoveries , including taking detailed recordings of Saturn and revealing that Jupiter also has rings, as well as active volcanism on one of its moons, Io. The probes later discovered 23 new moons around the outer planets.

As their trajectory takes them so far from the sun, the Voyager probes are unable to use solar panels, instead converting the heat produced from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity to power the spacecraft’s systems.

Nasa hopes to continue to collect data from the two Voyager spacecraft for several more years but engineers expect the probes will be too far out of range to communicate in about a decade, depending on how much power they can generate. Voyager 2 is slightly behind its twin and is moving slightly slower.

In roughly 40,000 years, the probes will pass relatively close, in astronomical terms, to two stars. Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of a star in the constellation Ursa Minor, while Voyager 2 will come within a similar distance of a star called Ross 248 in the constellation of Andromeda.

More on this story

Cosmic cleaners: the scientists scouring English cathedral roofs for space dust

Russia acknowledges continuing air leak from its segment of space station

Uncontrolled European satellite falls to Earth after 30 years in orbit

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko sets world record for most time spent in space

‘Old smokers’: astronomers discover giant ancient stars in Milky Way

Nasa postpones plans to send humans to moon

What happened to the Peregrine lander and what does it mean for moon missions?

Peregrine 1 has ‘no chance’ of landing on moon due to fuel leak

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VIEW LARGER COVER

The Silent Landscape

The scientific voyage of hms challenger (2003).

In 1872 HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England, to map and sample the ocean floor. This marked the birth of modern oceanography. By retracing Challenger’s extraordinary voyage, we view our underwater landscape anew – focusing on what 21st century science is now able to add to this incredible story.

The oceans make up more than two thirds of the Earth’s surface. But they are as mysterious for what they conceal beneath their surfaces as they are familiar for their ubiquity. Deep below the susurrus swell of waves lies an alien world that we have only begun to explore. The quest to know more about this secret domain began in earnest in the late 1800s. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection set the scientific world abuzz with its radical theory of evolution, and sparked a feverish desire to know more about the workings of nature. Scientists became increasingly convinced that the ocean floor could provide proof – or refutation – of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. They believed that the ocean floor was a haven for life that had long been extinct on land and that obscure fossil evidence culled from the depths could provide us with information on species that no longer existed topside. So an expedition was specifically designed and undertaken to investigate the natural history and geology of the ocean floor. With its emphasis on locating and retrieving fossil records that would test the new theory of evolution, Challenger’s voyage was nothing less than a mission to choose between God and science.

Sailing three and half years and 69,000 nautical miles through burning tropical heat waves and stupefyingly cold Antarctic seas, and suffering further privations of hunger, storms, and sometimes crushing boredom between data-collecting surveys, Challenger dredged up thousands of samples from the sea floor and mapped enormous areas of undersea terrain. The final result was nothing short of a roaring success. So extensive were their findings that it was to take the scientists 19 years to completely examine and report on all their data. The final report, published in 1895, ran to fifty volumes. Most startling of all was the revelation that the ocean was not a silent landscape that serenely reflected Earth’s past – it was a gloriously vibrant ecosystem teeming with a variety and multitude of life on a scale we could scarcely imagine from our landlocked perspective.

Relying on the official documentation, logs, and journals of the ship’s company, The Silent Landscape recounts the tale of an extraordinary voyage brought to life by 21st-century science. From the endangered coral reefs of the Caribbean to the trackless depths beneath the western Pacific, The Silent Landscape takes us on an epic journey across time.

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Richard Corfield is an earth scientist and science writer based at Oxford University. Educated at Bristol and Cambridge in the U.K., he is a regular feature writer for popular magazines in the natural sciences. The Silent Landscape is his second book. Professor Corfield lives in West Oxfordshire, England, with his wife and two children. You may learn more about the voyage of Challenger by visiting Professor Corfield's web site at www.richardcorfield.com.

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Richard Corfield. 2003. The Silent Landscape: The Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger . Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10725. Import this citation to: Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager

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Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

How NASA Repaired Voyager 1 From 15 Billion Miles Away

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting , building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.

Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) , one of the probe's three computers.

“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop in the room,” said Linda Spilker, project scientist for NASA's two Voyager spacecraft at JPL. “It was quiet. People were looking very serious. They were looking at their computer screens. Each of the subsystem (engineers) had pages up that they were looking at, to watch as they would be populated.”

Finally, a Breakthrough

Launched nearly 47 years ago, Voyager 1 is flying on an outbound trajectory more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to cover that distance at the speed of light. This means it takes nearly two days for engineers to uplink a command to Voyager 1 and get a response.

In November, Voyager 1 suddenly stopped transmitting its usual stream of data containing information about the spacecraft's health and measurements from its scientific instruments. Instead, the spacecraft's datastream was entirely unintelligible. Because the telemetry was unreadable, experts on the ground could not easily tell what went wrong. They hypothesized the source of the problem might be in the memory bank of the FDS.

There was a breakthrough last month when engineers sent up a novel command to “poke” Voyager 1's FDS to send back a readout of its memory. This readout allowed engineers to pinpoint the location of the problem in the FDS memory . The FDS is responsible for packaging engineering and scientific data for transmission to Earth.

After a few weeks, NASA was ready to uplink a solution to get the FDS to resume packing engineering data. This datastream includes information on the status of the spacecraft—things like power levels and temperature measurements. This command went up to Voyager 1 through one of NASA's large Deep Space Network antennae on Thursday.

Then, the wait for a response. Spilker, who started working on Voyager right out of college in 1977, was in the room when Voyager 1's signal reached Earth on Saturday.

“When the time came to get the signal, we could clearly see all of a sudden, boom, we had data, and there were tears and smiles and high fives,” she told Ars. “Everyone was very happy and very excited to see that, hey, we're back in communication again with Voyager 1. We're going to see the status of the spacecraft, the health of the spacecraft, for the first time in five months.”

Benj Edwards, Ars Technica

Megan Farokhmanesh

Vittoria Elliott

Throughout the five months of troubleshooting, Voyager's ground team continued to receive signals indicating the spacecraft was still alive. But until Saturday, they lacked insight into specific details about the status of Voyager 1.

“It’s pretty much just the way we left it,” Spilker said. “We're still in the initial phases of analyzing all of the channels and looking at their trends. Some of the temperatures went down a little bit with this period of time that's gone on, but we're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for. And that's always good news.”

Relocating Code

Through their investigation, Voyager's ground team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory had stopped working, probably due to either a cosmic ray hit or a failure of aging hardware. This affected some of the computer's software code.

“That took out a section of memory,” Spilker said. “What they have to do is relocate that code into a different portion of the memory, and then make sure that anything that uses those codes, those subroutines, know to go to the new location of memory, for access and to run it.”

Only about 3 percent of the FDS memory was corrupted by the bad chip, so engineers needed to transplant that code into another part of the memory bank. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety, NASA said.

So the Voyager team divided the code into sections for storage in different places in the FDS. This wasn't just a copy-and-paste job. Engineers needed to modify some of the code to make sure it will all work together. “Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well,” NASA said in a statement.

Newer NASA missions have hardware and software simulators on the ground, where engineers can test new procedures to make sure they do no harm when they uplink commands to the real spacecraft. Due to its age, Voyager doesn't have any ground simulators, and much of the mission's original design documentation remains in paper form and hasn't been digitized.

“It was really eyes-only to look at the code,” Spilker said. “So we had to triple check. Everybody was looking through and making sure we had all of the links coming together.”

This was just the first step in restoring Voyager 1 to full functionality. “We were pretty sure it would work, but until it actually happened, we didn't know 100 percent for sure,” Spilker said.

“The reason we didn’t do everything in one step is that there was a very limited amount of memory we could find quickly, so we prioritized one data mode (the engineering data mode), and relocated only the code to restore that mode,” said Jeff Mellstrom, a JPL engineer who leads the Voyager 1 “tiger team” tasked with overcoming this problem.

“The next step, to relocate the remaining three actively used science data modes, is essentially the same,” Mellstrom said in a written response to Ars. “The main difference is the available memory constraint is now even tighter. We have ideas where we could relocate the code, but we haven’t yet fully assessed the options or made a decision. These are the first steps we will start this week.”

It could take “a few weeks” to go through the sections of code responsible for packaging Voyager 1's science data in the FDS, Spilker said.

That will be the key payoff, Spilker said. Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, are the only operating probes flying in the interstellar medium, the diffuse gas between the stars. Their prime missions are long over. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980, then got a gravitational boost toward the outer edge of the Solar System. Voyager 2 took a slower trajectory and encountered Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

For the past couple of decades, NASA has devoted Voyager's instruments to studying cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and the plasma environment in interstellar space. They're not taking pictures anymore. Both probes have traveled beyond the heliopause, where the flow of particles emanating from the Sun runs into the interstellar medium.

But any scientific data collected by Voyager 1 since November 14 has been lost. The spacecraft does not have the ability to store science data onboard. Voyager 2 has remained operational during the outage of Voyager 1.

Scientists are eager to get their hands on Voyager 1's science data again. “With the results we got on Saturday, we have new confidence that we can put together the pieces we need to now get back the science data,” Spilker said.

“One thing I'm particularly excited about—there's this feature in the Voyager 1 data. We nicknamed it Pressure Front 2,” Spilker said. “Pressure Front 2 is a jump in both the density of the plasma around the spacecraft and the magnetic field. It's lasted for three-and-a-half years.”

“We'd like to see, is this still there?” she continued. “It's different from what we've seen in the past, and we're trying to figure out, is it some influence coming from the Sun, or is it actually something coming from interstellar space that's creating this feature? So we'd like to see it again, get more data, and be able to study it more carefully.”

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica .

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Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months.

By Orlando Mayorquin

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that — and much more.

Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “ pale blue dot, ” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space.

Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1 , the farthest man-made object in space, hasn’t sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission’s project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the “most serious issue” the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010.

The spacecraft encountered a glitch in one of its computers that has eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data back to Earth.

The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific breakthroughs and signal the beginning of the end for a mission that has given shape to humanity’s most distant ambition and inspired generations to look to the skies.

“Scientifically, it’s a big loss,” Ms. Dodd said. “I think — emotionally — it’s maybe even a bigger loss.”

Voyager 1 is one half of the Voyager mission. It has a twin spacecraft, Voyager 2.

Launched in 1977, they were primarily built for a four-year trip to Jupiter and Saturn , expanding on earlier flybys by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.

The Voyager mission capitalized on a rare alignment of the outer planets — once every 175 years — allowing the probes to visit all four.

Using the gravity of each planet, the Voyager spacecraft could swing onto the next, according to NASA .

The mission to Jupiter and Saturn was a success.

The 1980s flybys yielded several new discoveries, including new insights about the so-called great red spot on Jupiter, the rings around Saturn and the many moons of each planet.

Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptune , becoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore all four outer planets.

Voyager 1, meanwhile, had set a course for deep space, using its camera to photograph the planets it was leaving behind along the way. Voyager 2 would later begin its own trek into deep space.

“Anybody who is interested in space is interested in the things Voyager discovered about the outer planets and their moons,” said Kate Howells, the public education specialist at the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Dr. Sagan to promote space exploration.

“But I think the pale blue dot was one of those things that was sort of more poetic and touching,” she added.

On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, darting 3.7 billion miles away from the sun toward the outer reaches of the solar system, turned around and snapped a photo of Earth that Dr. Sagan and others understood to be a humbling self-portrait of humanity.

“It’s known the world over, and it does connect humanity to the stars,” Ms. Dodd said of the mission.

She added: “I’ve had many, many many people come up to me and say: ‘Wow, I love Voyager. It’s what got me excited about space. It’s what got me thinking about our place here on Earth and what that means.’”

Ms. Howells, 35, counts herself among those people.

About 10 years ago, to celebrate the beginning of her space career, Ms. Howells spent her first paycheck from the Planetary Society to get a Voyager tattoo.

Though spacecraft “all kind of look the same,” she said, more people recognize the tattoo than she anticipated.

“I think that speaks to how famous Voyager is,” she said.

The Voyagers made their mark on popular culture , inspiring a highly intelligent “Voyager 6” in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and references on “The X Files” and “The West Wing.”

Even as more advanced probes were launched from Earth, Voyager 1 continued to reliably enrich our understanding of space.

In 2012, it became the first man-made object to exit the heliosphere, the space around the solar system directly influenced by the sun. There is a technical debate among scientists around whether Voyager 1 has actually left the solar system, but, nonetheless, it became interstellar — traversing the space between stars.

That charted a new path for heliophysics, which looks at how the sun influences the space around it. In 2018, Voyager 2 followed its twin between the stars.

Before Voyager 1, scientific data on the sun’s gases and material came only from within the heliosphere’s confines, according to Dr. Jamie Rankin, Voyager’s deputy project scientist.

“And so now we can for the first time kind of connect the inside-out view from the outside-in,” Dr. Rankin said, “That’s a big part of it,” she added. “But the other half is simply that a lot of this material can’t be measured any other way than sending a spacecraft out there.”

Voyager 1 and 2 are the only such spacecraft. Before it went offline, Voyager 1 had been studying an anomalous disturbance in the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space.

“Nothing else is getting launched to go out there,” Ms. Dodd said. “So that’s why we’re spending the time and being careful about trying to recover this spacecraft — because the science is so valuable.”

But recovery means getting under the hood of an aging spacecraft more than 15 billion miles away, equipped with the technology of yesteryear. It takes 45 hours to exchange information with the craft.

It has been repeated over the years that a smartphone has hundreds of thousands of times Voyager 1’s memory — and that the radio transmitter emits as many watts as a refrigerator lightbulb.

“There was one analogy given that is it’s like trying to figure out where your cursor is on your laptop screen when your laptop screen doesn’t work,” Ms. Dodd said.

Her team is still holding out hope, she said, especially as the tantalizing 50th launch anniversary in 2027 approaches. Voyager 1 has survived glitches before, though none as serious.

Voyager 2 is still operational, but aging. It has faced its own technical difficulties too.

NASA had already estimated that the nuclear-powered generators of both spacecrafts would likely die around 2025.

Even if the Voyager interstellar mission is near its end, the voyage still has far to go.

Voyager 1 and its twin, each 40,000 years away from the next closest star, will arguably remain on an indefinite mission.

“If Voyager should sometime in its distant future encounter beings from some other civilization in space, it bears a message,” Dr. Sagan said in a 1980 interview .

Each spacecraft carries a gold-plated phonograph record loaded with an array of sound recordings and images representing humanity’s richness, its diverse cultures and life on Earth.

“A gift across the cosmic ocean from one island of civilization to another,” Dr. Sagan said.

Orlando Mayorquin is a general assignment and breaking news reporter based in New York. More about Orlando Mayorquin

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event  that’s out of this world with  our space and astronomy calendar .

Scientists may have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of dark energy, a mysterious cosmic force . That could be good news for the fate of the universe.

A new set of computer simulations, which take into account the effects of stars moving past our solar system, has effectively made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.

Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

Is Pluto a planet? And what is a planet, anyway? Test your knowledge here .

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Christopher Columbus

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not “discover” the so-called New World—millions of people already lived there—his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of exploration and colonization of North and South America.

Christopher Columbus and the Age of Discovery

During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this “ Age of Discovery ,” also known as “ Age of Exploration .”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods as well as enslaved people from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Did you know? Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. In fact, scholars argue that the idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round. (That is, it dates back to early Rome.)

Other European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in the seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of the 15th century, Spain’s “ Reconquista ”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom after centuries of war—was complete, and the nation turned its attention to exploration and conquest in other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool merchant, is believed to have been born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap of wood and made his way to Lisbon, where he eventually studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He also began to hatch the plan that would change the world forever.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the 15th century, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea: They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.

But Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible, but comparatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage . 

He presented his plan to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not until 1492 that he found a sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile .

Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of whatever riches he found, along with a noble title and the governorship of any lands he should encounter.

Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, Land?

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set sail from Spain in three ships: the Niña , the Pinta and the Santa Maria . On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island in what we now know as the Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, but he did not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, it also recorded his initial impressions of the local people and his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in September 1493, Columbus returned to the Americas. He found the Hispaniola settlement destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved indigenous people.

Then he headed west to continue his mostly fruitless search for gold and other goods. His group now included a large number of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved. In lieu of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some 500 enslaved people to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the colonists had staged a bloody revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for gold and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned to Spain in chains.

In 1502, cleared of the most serious charges but stripped of his noble titles, the aging Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown to pay for one last trip across the Atlantic. This time, Columbus made it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon two of his four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. African coffee and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy —he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered.

HISTORY Vault: Columbus the Lost Voyage

Ten years after his 1492 voyage, Columbus, awaiting the gallows on criminal charges in a Caribbean prison, plotted a treacherous final voyage to restore his reputation.

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'Unprecedented,' 'Gobsmacked', 'Unbelievable': Changes in Antarctica's sea ice could have dramatic impacts, says climate scientist Edward Doddridge

In 1898, the crew of the first scientific expedition to Antarctica became trapped inside sea ice around the southernmost continent. Much of that once thick ice is dwindling, says polar researcher Edward Doddridge.

On Aug. 16, 1897, the  Research Vessel Belgica set sail from Antwerp, Belgium. The ship's destination — via Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and then Punta Arenas, Chile — was Antarctica, a continent that until that time remained completely unexplored by westerners .

The new land was not kind to its visitors. Shortly after its arrival, the Belgica became stuck in the thick halo of pack ice that surrounded the continent. As the Antarctic's dayless winter set in, the ship's 18 man crew were pushed to their mental and physical limits, consuming penguin and seal meat to survive.

"We are as hopelessly isolated as if we were on the surface of Mars," wrote Frederick Cook, the Belgica's American physician, in 1898. "And we are plunging still deeper and deeper into the white Antarctic silence."

In the days of faint sunlight that came in the following spring, the ship's desperate, disease-ridden crew resorted to dropping sticks of dynamite around the vessel, blasting the thick sea ice that enclosed them to create a narrow path to freedom. All but two of the crew survived the ordeal .

But now, for large parts of the year, the once plentiful sea ice encountered by the ill-fated voyage seems to be disappearing.

To discuss the expedition's history; the importance of Antarctica's sea ice in regulating the global climate; and the planetary implications of its growing absence, Live Science sat down with University of Tasmania oceanographer and climate scientist Edward Doddridge , who uses mathematical models and observations to understand the dynamics of the region.

Here's what he had to say:

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Ben Turner: What was the voyage of the RV Belgica? And how did it contribute to our understanding of Antarctica?

Edward Doddridge: The RV Belgica's voyage to Antarctica departed in 1897 and was the first of what became known as the "heroic age" of Antarctic exploration. This was the very end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Antarctica was a completely unknown place that no one had been to. Then — within just over a decade — people had gone all the way to the South Pole. 

Our scientific understanding of the region blossomed as we obtained the first records from the continent. It's still a continent that teaches us so much today, but the RV Belgica's voyage is the start.

Antarctica's sea ice has been declining since 2016. What does that mean for Earth's climate?

— '2023 just blew everything off the charts': Antarctic sea ice hits troubling low for third consecutive year

— Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is 'unavoidable,' study finds

— Antarctic sea ice reached 'record-smashing low' last month

BT: One of the reasons why you've written about the Belgica , and why its voyage is so famous, is because the pack ice there was so thick that the ship became stuck for nearly two winters. What does this tell us about that part of how the Antarctic was like back then? And how has it changed since?

ED: This is why I think that the RV Belgica's voyage is such an interesting one to look at now. The region of the Antarctic coastline they sailed to has been ice-free for the first time since satellite records began — it now doesn't have any ice for months and months of the year. That's pretty surprising in a 45-year record, but when you look back 125 years ago, and you see that they were trapped in ice that was 2 meters [6.6 feet] thick, that's a huge change.

It's a really startling story, because it's a nugget we can use to understand how it's changed over the last century. If you were to go down there this summer in a boat like a Belgica, you could sail all the way to the Antarctic coastline, frolic around on the Antarctic shore and then sail back to Belgium. And you might not have seen any expansive sea ice.

BT: Bringing this closer to the present — in 2023, after several years of record lows, the sea ice over the Antarctic's winter period failed to regrow. By the end of the Antarctic winter in July, the continent was missing a region of ice bigger than Western Europe. 

You're a polar researcher, you've studied this for a very long time. What were your thoughts when this happened last year?

ED: Almost disbelief. The measurements that we get for Antarctic sea ice are extremely well-calibrated, we know that the satellite is truthfully telling us how much ice there is. But looking at that graph, it was hard to comprehend that it could be so different from previous years. 

As a research community, we've struggled to even describe how unusual the change is. People throw around words like "unprecedented" or "gobsmacked" or "'unbelievable." For a while we were trying to use statistics to say that it was a one in many thousands or millions of years event; then we got into billions and even into tens of billions of years. 

At some point along the way, you just have to realize that the statistics aren't useful to understand this anymore. It's so far outside what we've seen in the last 45 years that we just have to say that it's completely different — that's as good as you can do.

BT: Yet even a non-expert in the field, who doesn't know about the different dynamics between the Arctic and Antarctic and is just generally aware of climate change as a thing, might expect this ice to melt at some point. Why did it surprise you so much?

ED: The difference is that the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents, whereas the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean. So in the Arctic, the amount of ice that you have in the winter is basically just the amount of ocean that you have, but you're never going to run out of ocean around Antarctica.

So when sea ice forms around Antarctica it can expand a long way, and the limit of this expansion is set by the interaction between the ocean, the atmosphere, and the ice. This means the ocean currents around Antarctica are crucial for how much ice you can have. All of this makes it really difficult to model. 

In the past, The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC models suggested that we should be losing ice in the Antarctic, just like we are in the Arctic, but we didn't see that in the satellite data up until 2014.

So last year, when it didn't come back during the winter, it was something that we hadn't predicted. We had the sense that climate change meant we will get less ice at some point in the future. But if you had asked climate scientists in 2020: "What's gonna happen in the winter of 2023?" No one would have predicted what we saw.

BT: So what's going on in the Antarctic to cause it? 

ED: Fundamentally, it has to be that the world is getting warmer and we know that a warmer world isn't consistent with lots of sea ice. As the atmosphere and the ocean warm, they're both going to affect the sea ice. But understanding all of the nuances of those interactions is really quite tricky.

There's a layer at the top of the ocean called the mixed layer. It has the same properties at any given location — it doesn't really change in temperature or saltiness. Around Antarctica, that layer is mostly about 100 meters [330 feet] thick during winter. Below that is where warmth comes up from other parts of the ocean and mixes with the top layer where it can inhibit sea ice. We've shown in our research that those subsurface ocean temperatures have been increasing, and the places where they've warmed the most we see the greatest reductions in sea ice.

BT: Playing devil's advocate, how can we rule out for certain that this is some kind of freak event? How do we find the smoking gun of a climate change signal in all of this?

ED: The honest answer at the moment is that we can't — we cannot conclusively rule out that this is just under multi-decadal or centennial variation in the sea ice. What we can do, though, is we can look at the 45 years of data that we have [satellite surveys of the poles began in 1979]. This suggests that, if there is some kind of change or freak event, it doesn't happen in a 45-year timeframe. 

The other thing that we can do is we can use models and run them over thousands of years. Again, there's no indication that something like 2023 regularly happens at random in these models.

BT: The Antarctic is one of the most remote regions of the world. Why does a sudden decline in sea ice there matter globally?

ED: So there are a few really crucial things that the sea ice does within the climate system. Firstly, it's really white and bright, so it reflects the sun's rays back out into space. This insulates the ocean underneath it and keeps it cold. If you take that away, you're accelerating the rate of warming in the region and contributing to increased warming globally.

Secondly, tiny microscopic plants called phytoplankton that absorb CO2 in the atmosphere grow on the sea ice, and there are also regions that form around the ice that take CO2 out of the atmosphere and away from the surface — roughly 10% of carbon dioxide that humans have emitted has been absorbed by the Southern Ocean. 

Finally, on a human level, so many really iconic species live around Antarctica. Krill feed on the phytoplankton that grow on the ice. So if we take it away, the krill will suffer, and so will the entire Southern Ocean ecosystem. 

BT: If the sea ice continues in its current decline, where could it end up? ED: The best tools we have are the models. And if you run them for long enough, then yeah, you reduce the amount of ice around Antarctica substantially. The other way we could guess is by looking at geographic sediment core records for past climate epochs. 

From those you can find periods where Antarctica had trees and plants and all sorts of animals living on it, suggesting that it was not a frozen continent. So you can certainly warm the planet up enough that there is no ice left, although I very much hope that we don't get anywhere near that.

 — 'Ghost' of ancient river-carved landscape discovered beneath Antarctica  

— El Niño kickstarted the melting of Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier' 80 years ago, new study reveals

— City-sized holes on Antarctica's ice shelves offer tantalizing 'window' into the frozen continent's underworld

BT: That sounds pretty disastrous for coastal regions, how much would sea levels rise if all that ice melted?

ED: Antarctica contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by 60 meters [200 feet].

BT: The Antarctic's circumpolar current drives the thermohaline circulation and global ocean currents such as Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which are really important for regulating Atlantic climates. Could this melt affect them?

ED: Changes in the sea ice are definitely going to impact the AMOC. The AMOC has water that forms up in the North Atlantic, it gets cold and salty and it sinks down and then comes back up in Antarctica. And there's another loop to that circulation for the cold dense water that forms around Antarctica.

That formation of what we call Antarctic bottom water — the densest, coldest water in the global ocean — is really dependent on sea ice formation. When glaciers and ice sheets on Antarctica melt, they release fresh water into the ocean and reduce the salt in the surface waters. 

This means they can't get as dense and sink as easily, reducing the rate of the circulation. There's been a couple of papers that have suggested that the AMOC has slowed down by 30% in the last few decades, and that there could be up to a 50% decrease in the coming years. 

So absolutely — changes in sea ice around Antarctica will change the global overturning circulation and the distribution of heat, salt and nutrients that it carries with it.

BT: So even though we can only see the first few dominoes in the chain, what we could be seeing is the start of a fundamental shift in the way our planet regulates temperature.

ED: Absolutely. It sounds kind of grandiose to say that, but it's true. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the center of our global ocean. It's where the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian oceans meet. So changes that happen in the Southern Ocean impact all of the oceans around the world. And if it changes, it alters the climate everywhere.

BT: And what should we be doing more broadly?

ED: Fundamentally, the only thing we can do to reduce the magnitude of these changes is to emit less CO2. That's the only lever we can pull. The only knob we can turn is how much CO2 we put into the atmosphere.

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

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• DAR In the recent past, a prominent scientist wrote an article about proven scientific facts stating the sun is going through one of its hot cycles, which it has done before. He states that all the things the "experts" say is causing climate change, including humans, are not what causes it at all! Why can't I tell you his name or how long it's estimated to last? Because the article was PULLED SO FAST I almost didn't get to read the last sentence, let alone have time to copy his name! The scientist himself was also immediately stifled!! WHY ARE THESE FACTS NOT PERMITTED?? Reply
• Broadlands It would have been better if these scientists had studied the history of the area back before the satellite era that began in 1979 before issuing their "unprecedented" warning. "Fundamentally, the only thing we can do to reduce the magnitude of these changes is to emit less CO2. That's the only lever we can pull. The only knob we can turn is how much CO2 we put into the atmosphere." If we emit less CO2 we will be less and less able to continue the transition to renewables and EVs because conventional vehicles are the only viable transportation that can make that happen. And reducing emissions takes none of the CO2 already added out of the atmosphere to lower global temperatures. Reply
• View All 2 Comments

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NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.

After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.

For the first time since November , NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

After receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in five months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

Get the Latest News from the Final Frontier

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago , the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

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Darwin's first—and only—trip around the world began a scientific revolution

The plants and animals encountered on the five-year voyage of the 'Beagle' provided the foundation for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

During August 1831 Charles Darwin , recently graduated from the University of Cambridge, was stuck at home on exactly the same principle, he complained, as a person would choose to remain in a debtors’ prison. At age 22, Darwin was fascinated by the natural world and inspired by the adventure stories of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt , whose travels across Central and South America in the early 1800s was the basis of a series of extensive travelogues. Darwin was desperate to undertake a similar scientific odyssey. An attempt to organize an expedition to Tenerife in the Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa, had fallen through.

The awful necessity of earning his own living, probably as the vicar of a country parish, seemed inescapable. And then a letter arrived offering Darwin an amazing opportunity. The writer was one of Darwin’s former teachers, John Stevens Henslow, professor of botany at Cambridge. Henslow informed Darwin that he had recommended him to accompany Captain Robert FitzRoy on an expedition aboard the H.M.S. Beagle . He wrote: “I state this not on the supposition of yr. being a finished Naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing, & noting any thing worthy . . . in Natural History.”

Robert FitzRoy was an aristocratic but mercurial naval captain. In 1826 he had set off as a crew member on the Beagle to carry out a survey of South America. In the course of the voyage, he was placed in command of the expedition, from which he returned in 1830. The letter from Henslow to Darwin was written as FitzRoy was under instructions from the Admiralty to mount a second survey expedition to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago at the tip of South America. The primary motive of the voyage was to chart the coast of South America. A secondary motive was scientific exploration. FitzRoy wanted a naturalist aboard, both to carry out scientific work and to keep him company.

Despite Henslow’s recommendation, however, Darwin’s place was not immediately assured. FitzRoy’s first impression of the young naturalist was not entirely favorable. Darwin’s father expressed skepticism at the expense and dangerous nature of the venture. The Beagle was the overcrowded home to a total crew of 74. Shipwreck was a common hazard, death through disease an even greater one, and much of South America was lawless. To try to convince his father, Darwin sought help from his mother’s brother, the industrialist Josiah Wedgwood II. Wedgwood’s daughter Emma had been a childhood friend of Darwin’s, and the two first cousins would later marry, in 1839.

Setting sail

In the end both FitzRoy and his father were persuaded that he should go, and on December 27, 1831, the Beagle sailed out of Plymouth with Darwin on board. Originally planned for two years, the voyage stretched to five, and took Darwin not only to South America but to Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and many of the Atlantic and Pacific islands in between. Darwin often left the ship to travel hundreds of miles on horseback.

Life aboard the Beagle

First launched in 1820, the Beagle started life as a brig (a swift two-masted vessel), 90 feet long and 25 feet wide. It was reconditioned as a three-masted bark in 1825, and later set off to South America under the command of Pringle Stokes. Stokes died during the mission, and Robert FitzRoy took command. On the Beagle’ s return in 1830, it was remodeled again for a second surveying expedition in which Darwin would participate (1831-36); the route would take the Beagle to South America and then make a circumnavigation of the globe.

The 74-person crew for this second voyage consisted of officers, midshipmen, sailors and porters, and marines, who all formed the naval crew; in addition, there were nine noncommissioned members, including Darwin. It was a large crew for a ship of such modest dimensions, as Darwin wrote: “The vessel is a very small one . . . but every body says it is the best sort for our work . . . The want of room is very bad, but we must make the best of it.”

Darwin spent most of his time in the stern where Captain FitzRoy’s cabin was located. Darwin’s cabin was outfitted with a folding bunk and bookshelves. He also had a chest in which to store the samples collected ashore. Darwin soon felt at ease on the Beagle. He wrote in February 1832: “I find to my great surprise that a ship is singularly comfortable for all sorts of work. Everything is so close at hand, & being cramped, make one so methodical, that in the end I have been a gainer. I already have got to look at going to sea as a regular quiet place, like going back to home after staying away from it.”

In the course of this extraordinary journey, he filled notebook after notebook with sketches and observations. Darwin shipped home barrels, boxes, and bottles by the dozen, filled with pressed plants, fossils, rocks, skins, and skeletons. He explored landscapes that ranged from the gray desolation of the Falklands to the glorious heights of the Andes, from the wild glaciated cliffs of the Beagle Channel to the beaches of Tahiti, from the tropical lushness of Rio to the dripping rainforest of southern Chile.

Early observations

First landfall was the volcanic island of St. Jago (now Santiago) in the Cape Verde Islands. After three weeks of seasickness, Darwin threw himself enthusiastically into his first independent fieldwork, identifying rock samples and recording a cross section of the volcanic strata. He had the best equipment he could buy: a microscope, a clinometer for measuring angles, geological hammers, and a vasculum (a container for botanical specimens), but he was still a novice. He boasted in a letter to his Cambridge teacher, John Stevens Henslow, that his discovery of a color-changing octopus “appears to be new.” It wasn’t, and Henslow gently disabused him. ( Here's how animals are able to manipulate their color. )

By February 15, 1832, they were resupplying on the remote rocky islets of St. Paul’s, and two weeks later, the Beagle crossed the Equator and reached the coast of Brazil. Darwin, however, injured in the final leg of the journey, was forced to stay on board, so it was April before he first set foot in South America, at Botafogo Bay near Rio de Janeiro.

For the next few months as the crew of the Beagle sailed up and down the coast checking and rechecking naval charts, Darwin stayed ashore, happily exploring the Corcovado mountains near Rio, shifting from geology to zoology and building an impressive collection of spiders and wasps .

A man of letters

During the Beagle ’s voyage, Darwin famously amassed a huge scientific collection of plants and animals, but another important legacy is his prolific and detailed correspondence with family and friends. The letters reflect Darwin’s mood over the five years of the voyage and—despite the ups and downs—suggest he was never disheartened. His words to his loved ones also expose the man behind the scientist. His humanity and personality quirks are on full display—from delighting in his private cabin on the ship to asking his sisters to mail him more “Prometheans,” or matches.

The ship went south again at the end of June. This time he went, too, encountering porpoises, whales, penguins, and seals. The expedition dropped anchor at the end of July at the mouth of the majestic Río de la Plata. Both Montevideo on the north bank, where they helped put down a revolt, and Buenos Aires on the south bank, where they were fired on as suspected cholera-carriers, were dangerous places. The flat and empty landscape seemed to Darwin a poor exchange for the lushness of the tropics. (Related: The tropics are home to 80 percent of the world's species, but they're losing wildlife fast. )

All the while, Darwin’s collections were annoying the ship’s purser who complained about the clutter. Darwin had already learned some taxidermy, and now experimented with other ways of preserving unfamiliar specimens using wax, spirits, and thin sheets of lead—with mixed results. ( See how one museum moved hundreds of taxidermy animals. )

Darwin's birds

The first letters from home brought criticism and advice from Henslow, on whose doorstep Darwin’s treasures were landing. It is another reminder of how Darwin's voyage was a learning experience: His labels weren’t securely fixed, beetles had been crushed, mice had gone moldy, and one mystery bottle looked like “the remains of an electric explosion, a mere mass of soot.”

By September 1832 they were surveying the coast of Argentina. Already a good shot, Darwin learned to use a bola (a weighted lasso) to bring down ostriches and took time off from “admiring the Spanish ladies” to discover his first large fossilized vertebrate—a Megatherium, an extinct species of giant ground sloth. Darwin’s curiosity was piqued by its similarity to a species of agouti, a rodent native to South America. In November he returned to Buenos Aires to restock for the voyage to Cape Horn.

A year after leaving home, the Beagle , like the Endeavour of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks before it, finally anchored in the Bay of Good Success on the coast of Tierra del Fuego. It was magnificent but inhospitable country. They spent Christmas on Hermit Island, just west of the cape, but were repeatedly beaten back by gales. One of their whaleboats was smashed against the ship in a storm, and Darwin lost notes and specimens.

After arriving at Ponsonby Sound, FitzRoy and some of the crew, including Darwin, headed off in two of the ship’s boats on a 300-mile round trip to chart the farther reaches of the Beagle Channel, named for FitzRoy’s first adventures there. It was spectacular country. Darwin’s letters home glitter with descriptions of the glaciers’ beauty. But they were dangerous as well: When a large sheet of ice crashed into the water sending a surge along the shore toward their boats, it was Darwin who led the desperate race to drag them to safety. FitzRoy named the place Darwin Sound in his honor.

Reptilian relationships

On April 18, 1835 Darwin wrote a long letter from Valparaíso (Chile) to his friend and former teacher, the botanist and geologist John Stevens Henslow. He described the local lizards and invited his colleagues’ opinions. Darwin's methodical approach to research and his generosity and openness to academic cooperation is on full display: “I also send a small bottle with 2 Lizards: one of them is Viviparous, as you will see by the accompanying notice.” Darwin had heard of a French scholar who had found a similar lizard, so he urged his friend to “hand over the Specimens to some good Lizardologist & Comparative Anatomist to publish an account of their internal structure.”

Foiled in their attempt to round the cape, they sailed east and on March 1, 1833, arrived at the Falkland Islands where the navy was keen to discover safe harbors. Concerned that the Beagle crew alone could not complete their mission, FitzRoy bought another boat: the Adventure. Both ships returned in April to Montevideo, where Darwin set off on his first long inland expedition, accompanied by the Beagle’ s cabin boy, Syms Covington, whom Darwin had hired as combined servant and research assistant. They did not rendezvous with the ship until September, in Buenos Aires.

Rounding the Cape

Both the Beagle and the Adventure headed south in December, retracing the route of the previous year as far as Tierra del Fuego. There, Darwin finally found something he had been looking for: a new species of rhea (originally named Rhea darwinii ), an ostrich-like bird—but only after half of it had been eaten for the crew’s dinner.

By March 1834 they were once again forced to head back to the Falklands without rounding the cape. The Beagle’ s keel had been badly damaged, so by the middle of April it was beached at the mouth of the Rio Santa Cruz for repairs. FitzRoy took advantage of the opportunity to mount an expedition upriver. They rowed and dragged the boats 140 miles through uncharted territory. It took three weeks to go up and three days to sail back down, Darwin all the while was adding to his observations. ( These scientists spent months exploring the Okavango delta. )

Darwin's fossils

After the Beagle was repaired, it made a third attempt to round the cape. Perhaps the third time was the charm, because this time they made it. In June 1834 the expedition finally reached the west coast of South America.

The next year was spent following the coastline of Chile and Peru in much the same manner as the previous two and a half years had been spent in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina: The Beagle followed a switchback course, surveying and resurveying the complex archipelago of the coastline.

Darwin loathed the incessantly dripping and impenetrable temperate rainforest of southern Chile, and was frequently absent organizing his own inland expeditions. He traveled southeast through the Andes from the colonial elegance of Valparaíso to Santiago. It was largely uncharted, so he relied on the help of locals who drew maps, advised on safe routes, and helped hire guides and horses. One looked after him for several weeks when he fell dangerously ill, probably with typhoid fever. Meanwhile FitzRoy felt isolated, overworked, and depressed. The Admiralty’s unwillingness to shoulder the cost of the Adventur e forced him to sell the ship, after which he threatened to resign. The future of the voyage hung in the balance.

Darwin made one more major land expedition, traveling 220 miles from Valparaíso through the Andes to Coquimbo and Copiapó, before rejoining the Beagle to sail to Iquique in Peru. From Lima they sailed west at the end of July 1835 and arrived at the Galápagos archipelago in mid-September.

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They spent five weeks exploring the islands, each with its own distinctive flora and fauna. Darwin, still months from forming even a rudimentary theory on how species might evolve over time, filed new facts away with each species he came across. Although the Galápagos, and their finches and great tortoises are closely connected in the popular imagination with the origins of his ideas about species change, Darwin did not conceive of his famous hypothesis on that visit. ( Turns out Galápagos tortoises migrate—just very slowly. )

Darwin’s observations on this trip led to a different grand, scientific theory. In the Andes, in the Uspallata Pass, he had noticed something curious: fossilized trees that he realized must once have been submerged in the sea. The question in Darwin’s mind was how had they been raised so high up in the mountains.

On January 19, 1835, while Darwin was exploring inland, the Beagle crew had witnessed the eruption of the Osorno Volcano in Chile. A month later, farther up the coast, an earthquake struck and caused a tidal wave. Darwin began to speculate that the events might be connected. FitzRoy reviewed earlier soundings and confirmed the height of the land had changed. Armed with this information, Darwin proposed a theory of continental-scale fall and uplift, with tiny changes working over eons to create dramatic landscapes like those in the Andes.

With this in mind, when they arrived in Tahiti and Darwin saw his first coral reef, he proposed a brilliant new solution to the mystery of how such reefs were formed. His letters describing his ideas were, unbeknownst to him, appearing in scientific journals, and he would return with an already established scientific reputation. But he wasn’t home yet. As they sailed west from the coast of Africa, FitzRoy had found errors in the very first charts they had made, and diverted across the Atlantic to resurvey the coast of Brazil.

The Beagle finally docked at Falmouth on October 2, 1836. Darwin never left Britain again, but he maintained a robust correspondence with his colleagues all over the world about the work done on the voyage. He went on to publish more than 20 articles from his notes and diaries written aboard the Beagle. He published books, became a best-selling travel writer, and a leading scientist.

Evolution of a theory

It is likely that during his trip aboard the Beagle Darwin may have already been beginning to sketch a first outline of his theory of evolution. Immediately after returning to London, he began to work on the theory in earnest, albeit secretly, in his private notebooks. He drafted a first brief treatise that he kept hidden for fear of the scandal it would provoke. As early as 1837 (a year after his return on the Bea- gle ), he drew a “tree of life” to illustrate the evolution—or “transmutation” as he then termed it—of species. It was not until 1859 that Darwin published the final version of his theory, spurred to do so by the publication of similar ideas by the English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.

The work of identifying hundreds of specimens was parceled out to others, many of whom became lifelong friends and colleagues. Although not conceived during the voyage, Darwin’s ideas about species change were born not only out of his encounters with so many different plants and animals (including humans), but, most importantly, through the opportunity to see them in all the complexity of their shared habitats. Many years later, Darwin had no hesitation in declaring the voyage of the Beagle the single most important event of his life.

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Contact restored with NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe

Contact restored.

That was the message relieved NASA officials shared after the agency regained full contact with the Voyager 1 space probe, the most distant human-made object in the universe, scientists have announced.

For the first time since November, the spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems, NASA said in a news release Monday.

The 46-year-old pioneering probe, now 15.1 billion miles from Earth, has continually defied expectations for its life span as it ventures farther into the  uncharted territory of the cosmos .

More: Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles from home and broken. Here's how NASA is trying to fix it.

Computer experts to the rescue

It wasn't as easy as hitting Control-Alt-Delete, but top experts at NASA and CalTech were able to fix the balky, ancient computer on board the probe that was causing the communication breakdown – at least for now.

A computer problem aboard Voyager 1 on Nov. 14, 2023, corrupted the stream of science and engineering data the craft sent to Earth,  making it unreadable .

Although the radio signal from the spacecraft had never ceased its connection to ground control operators on Earth, that signal had not carried any usable data since November, NASA said. After some serious sleuthing to fix the onboard computer, that changed on April 20, when NASA finally received usable data.

In interstellar space

The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between the stars).

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally, NASA reports. Launched  more than 46 years ago , the twin spacecraft are standouts on two fronts: they've operated the longest and traveled the farthest of any spacecraft ever.

Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

More: NASA gave Voyager 1 a 'poke' amid communication woes. Here's why the response was encouraging.

They were  designed to last five years but have become the longest-operating spacecraft in history. Both carry  gold-plated copper discs  containing sounds and images from Earth, content that was chosen by a team headed by celebrity astronomer  Carl Sagan .

For perspective, it was the summer of 1977 when the Voyager probes left Earth. "Star Wars" was No. 1 at the box office, Jimmy Carter was in the first year of his presidency, and Elvis Presley had just died.

Contributing: Eric Lagatta and George Petras

March 14, 2024

10 min read

Voyager 1’s Immortal Interstellar Requiem

NASA is reaching across more than 15 billion miles to rescue its malfunctioning Voyager 1 probe—but this hallowed interstellar mission can’t live forever

By Nadia Drake

An artist's concept of NASA's Voyager 1, the space agency's venerable and farthest-flung interplanetary probe.

Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library

In the fall of last year, one of NASA’s most venerable spacecraft started beaming home nonsense. Its usual string of 1’s and 0’s—binary code that collectively told of its journey into the unknown—became suddenly unintelligible.

Some 15 billion miles from Earth, beyond the protective bubble blown by the sun and in interstellar space, Voyager 1 was in trouble.

“We’d gone from having a conversation with Voyager, with the 1’s and 0’s containing science data, to just a dial tone,” says Linda Spilker , Voyager project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

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Spilker joined JPL in 1977, the same year that NASA launched Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2 , on what, in a way, was an endless odyssey: from Earth, to the outer solar system and ultimately to interstellar infinity . Today there are several billion people on Earth who have never taken a breath without the Voyagers in our sky, people who, like me, have only ever existed in a cosmos shared with these talkative twin spacecraft. But like people, spacecraft get old. They break down .

And all good things—and even great ones—must come to an end. After days, and weeks and then months of nothing but indecipherable binary babbling, Voyager 1’s earthbound stewards had to reckon with the idea that maybe, after more than 46 years, its time had at last run out.

The Voyager 1 team at JPL had traced the problem to the spacecraft’s Flight Data System, an onboard computer that parses and parcels engineering and science measurements for subsequent radio transmittal to Earth. One possibility was that a high-energy cosmic particle had struck Voyager 1 and caused a bit flip within the system’s memory — something that has happened more frequently as the craft navigates the hostile wilds of interstellar space. Normally, the team would simply ask the spacecraft for a memory readout, allowing its members to find and reset the errant bit.

“We’ve recovered from bit flips before. The problem this time is we don’t know where the bit flip is because we can’t see what the memory is,” says Suzanne Dodd , Voyager project manager at JPL, who, like Spilker, began her long career with work on the probes. “It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft.”

Yesterday, the team announced a significant step in breaking through to Voyager 1. After months of stress and unsuccessful answers they have managed to decode at least a portion of the spacecraft’s gobbledygook, allowing them to (maybe) find a way to see what it has been trying to say.

“It’s an excellent development on Voyager,” says Joe Westlake , director of NASA’s heliophysics division, which oversees the mission.

In the time it will take you to read this story, Voyager 1 will have traversed approximately 10,000 miles of mostly empty space ; in the weeks it took me to report it, the probe traveled some 26 million miles. And since its communication first became garbled last November, the spacecraft has sailed another 10 light-minutes away from home. Voyager 1 and its twin are slipping away from us as surely as the passage of time itself. Sooner or later, these hallowed space-age icons will fall silent, becoming no more than distant memories.

And even among the space community, which of course loves all of its robotic explorers equally, the Voyagers are special. “They are incredibly important and much beloved spacecraft,” says Nicola Fox , NASA’s associate administrator for science. “Voyager 1 is a national treasure, along with Voyager 2 .”

As envisioned, the Voyager mission would exploit a once-in-175-year alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune to slingshot through the solar system’s sparsely charted hinterlands. Legend has it that NASA’s administrator sold the project to President Richard Nixon by noting that the last time the planets were so favorably arranged, Thomas Jefferson was living in the White House. Outfitted with nuclear power sources, the Voyagers were built to last—in utter defiance of the adage that what must go up, must come down. Neither was ever intended to make planetfall again; instead they were bound for the stars. And now, nearly a half-century later, the pair have become the longest-lived and farthest-flung probes ever dispatched by humankind. (Voyager 1 is the front-runner, with its sibling trailing close behind.)

Spilker was straight out of college when she started working on the Voyagers, eager to see the outer solar system through their robotic eyes as they surfed the rare celestial alignment. “I had a telescope in third grade that I used to look at Jupiter and Saturn,” she says. “I wanted to get up really close and get a look at what these planets look like.”

Between 1979 and 1981, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 zipped by the gas giants , returning stunning images of banded Jupiter and buttery Saturn and their bewildering collection of moons. Voyager 2 went on to scrutinize the ice giants: Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. These were the first and only times anyone had seen each of these bluish ringed worlds up close.

“They were small little pinpoints of light, and now you’re flying close,” Spilker says. “And you see the cliffs of Miranda”—a bizarre Uranian moon—“and Triton, with active geysers going off.” (Nobody had expected to see an active icy world in orbit around Neptune, and even now Voyager’s 35-year-old image is still the best we have of that strange little moon.)

When the Voyagers left the realm of the known planets, each followed a different path into darkness: Voyager 1 arced up and out of the plane of the solar system, and Voyager 2 looped downward. Spilker also followed her own path: she went to graduate school and earned her doctorate in planetary science using Voyager data—not knowing that several decades later, after leading NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, she’d again be part of the mission that started it all.

“The chance came to go back to Voyager,” she says. “And I said, ‘Of course. I’d love to go back.’”

In the interim, as the Voyagers sailed farther from their Earthly harbor, teams shut down many of the onboard instruments, including the cameras. But the pair kept studying the space that they alone were visiting. Their main job was now to characterize the heliosphere—the solar-system-encompassing, cosmic-ray-blocking bubble formed by our sun’s wind and magnetic field. They would document the alien mix of particles and fields that pervade near nothingness. And maybe, if they got lucky, the twins would each escape the protective solar caul entirely to be reborn as true interstellar wanderers.

In 2012 Voyager 1 transcended this boundary , known as the heliopause, where the sun’s influence wanes. Before that scientists could only guess at what lay beyond this barrier and could only model how it shielded Earth from the harshness of the void. Now Voyager 1 could tell us directly about the stuff between the stars. Voyager 2 followed in 2018 , and Fox—then the new chief of NASA’s heliophysics division—was in the midst of the action.

“You’re looking at the cosmic rays going up and the solar wind going down, and it was one of those ‘oh, my god, this is so exciting’ moments,” Fox recalls. “I think of the Voyagers as one mission,” she says. “We’re putting all the data together, but they’re the ones that are out there. They’re the brave spacecraft that have left the protective bubble of the heliosphere and are out exploring interstellar space. It’s hard not to be excited by them.”

This wasn’t the first time Voyager 1 had started speaking an unintelligible language. In 2022, when the probe suffered an earlier bout of garbled telemetry, JPL engineer Bob Rasmussen was shaken out of retirement. The lab wanted to know if Rasmussen, who’d joined the spacecraft’s systems engineering team in 1975, was willing to have a think about the situation.

“I’d been happily retired for a bit more than a year at that point, with plenty else to keep me busy,” Rasmussen says. “But I like solving puzzles, and this was a tough one that I just couldn’t pass up. Cracking it took a few months, but the puzzle stream hasn’t slowed since then.”

Afterward, he stayed on-call. So last November, when Voyager 1 again started transmitting nonsense, Rasmussen was ready for more problem-solving. He was joined by a hand-picked team of specialists, and together they dove into the details for getting the ailing spacecraft back in action.

The problems were at least three layers deep. First, it takes a long time to communicate with Voyager 1. Traveling at the speed of light, the radio signals used to command the spacecraft take 22.5 hours to travel 15 billion miles—and 22.5 hours to come back. Second, the Voyagers are not exactly modern technology.

“Most things don’t last 46 years. Your clock radio and toaster aren’t going to last 46 years,” says Dodd, who started on the Voyager project straight out of school, then worked on other missions and is now back on this one.

Plus, many of the people who built and developed the spacecraft in the 1970s aren’t around to explain the rationale behind the designs.

And third, unluckily enough, whatever had mangled the spacecraft had managed to take out Voyager 1’s ability to send meaningful communications. The team was in the dark, trying to find the invisible source of an error. (Imagine trying to revive a stalled desktop computer with a frozen screen: you can’t see your cursor, and your clicks risk causing more problems—except in this case each input carries a multiday lag and could damage a precious, misbehaving artifact that is more than 15 billion miles away.) Perhaps the most vexing part was the team’s knowledge that Voyager 1 was otherwise intact and functioning as it should be.

“It’s still doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” Westlake says. “It just can’t quite figure out how to send the correct message home.”

Rasmussen and his colleagues set out to understand the spacecraft in as much detail as possible. That meant poring over the original design schematics, now yellowed and pinned to various walls—an effort that resembled “a bit of an archaeology dig,” Dodd says—and studying how past teams had addressed anomalies. That was tricky, Dodd says, because even though the team members could figure out how engineers solved a problem, they couldn’t necessarily discern the rationale behind various solutions. They’d send commands to Voyager 1 about once a week—usually on Fridays—and by Sunday, they’d hear back from the spacecraft.

“There’s suspense after each cautious move, hope with each piece that falls into place, disappointment if our hunches are wrong,” Rasmussen says.

Progress was slow. And as time crept on, the team grew more concerned. But no one was giving up, at any level of leadership.

“I will rely on the Voyager team to say, ‘Hey, Nicky, we’ve done everything , ’” Fox says. “We wouldn’t make any decisions until we knew that every single thing had been tried and tried again because we really do want to get Voyager 1 back talking to us.”

And then, in early March, something changed. In response to a command, instead of beaming back absolute gibberish, the spacecraft sent a string of numbers that looked more familiar. It proved to be a Rosetta stone moment. Soon an unnamed engineer at NASA’s Deep Space Network—the globe-girdling array of radio dishes that relays information from Earth to spacecraft—had learned how to speak Voyager 1’s jumbled language.

After translating that vaguely familiar portion of the spacecraft’s transmission, the team could see that it contained a readout of the flight data system’s memory. Now they face new questions: Can they find and correct the source of the mutated code? Can they learn whether the spacecraft is sending useful science data? Can they restore Voyager 1’s lexicon to its original state—or will they need to continue speaking in the probe’s new postheliopause patois? “The hope is that we’ll get good science data back,” Westlake says. “Thinking about something that’s been a constant throughout my entire career going away is really tough to think about.”

But either by glitch or time’s slow decay of radioactive power sources, the Voyagers will, of course, eventually fade away. Each year they lose four watts of power, and they grow ever colder. “Whether it’s this particular anomaly that gets us or one downstream, or the spacecraft gets old enough and cold enough —one day you’ll go to look for it and it has just stopped working,” Spilker says.

Like silent ambassadors or wordless emissaries, the Voyagers will keep sailing outward, still carrying us with them into the stars—“sort of like a message a bottle,” Spilker says.

Besides their science payloads, a fraction of each spacecraft’s mass was devoted to casting a cosmic message into the interstellar ocean from a lonely island called Earth. Mounted to each probe is a golden record etched with grooves encoding a selection of sights and sounds from our small corner of space and time. An accompanying stylus is positioned to play the record from the beginning, alongside a pictographic and arithmetic instruction manual.

The records are gold because gold is stable for eons, and they’re records because that was the best way to store a lot of information in the 1970s. Should they ever be recovered and decoded, the message will tell the stories of we humans—at least as envisioned (and in some cases performed) by a small group of folks that included my parents ( the late astrophysicist Frank Drake and his surviving spouse Amahl Shakhashiri Drake), astronomer Carl Sagan, documentary producer Ann Druyan and science writer Timothy Ferris. Those stories are imperfect. They’re filled with lopsided optimism and scrubbed of references to war, famine, poverty and most any other Earthly failing—a deliberate decision to hide the defects of our broken world. I know this because my dad, the record’s technical director and a pioneer in the scientific quest to find cosmic civilizations, told me about the hard choices he’d made in selecting the photographs. And I know it because my mom, who recorded the message’s Arabic greeting (“Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday”), helped, too.

For me, as the Voyagers travel through space , they’re not only helping us understand the cosmic context in which we exist; they’re also bearing a memento of my parents into the stars. These spacecraft—and their gleaming paean to Earth—will survive for billions of years. Long after our world, our sun and everything we hold dear becomes unrecognizable, the Voyagers will remain, resolutely speeding ever farther from a home that no longer exists and containing artifacts of a civilization that once was.

That’s why, over nearly half a century, the Voyagers and their interstellar tidings have come to be bigger than the already audacious mission they were designed to accomplish. Their reach is broader. And their inevitable silence will be profound.

“The thought that they’re out there on their own and you can no longer communicate with them—it’s traumatic,” Fox says. “It’s sad. It’s really sad.”

Graf Zeppelin: 5 Things You Didn't Know About The World's Most Successful Rigid Airship

• The Graf Zeppelin accomplished several aviation firsts, including the first commercial transatlantic flight, and a round-the-world flight.
• The airship had a luxurious gondola with private cabins and a lounge, catering primarily to the elite.
• The catastrophic Hindenburg disaster marked the end of airship travel, leading to the Graf Zeppelin's retirement in 1937.

The LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin is remembered as the most successful Zeppelin ever made. Over its career, the giant airship flew over a million miles on 590 flights and carried over 34,000 passengers without a single injury. Before aircraft, it was Zeppelins flying passengers across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. The Graf Zeppelin was withdrawn from service after the disaster of the Hindenburg airship that catastrophically burst into flames in Lakehurst, New Jersey on its maiden flight.

A zeppelin of firsts

The graf zeppelin was the first to cross several aviation milestones, including offering the first commercial transatlantic flight..

The Graf Zeppelin set a number of early records, being the first in a number of fields. It was the first to offer commercial transatlantic passenger flights a decade before Pan Am introduced its Clipper flying boat service across the Atlantic. On October 11, 1928, the Graf Zeppelin departed Friedrichshafen, Germany, arriving at Lakehurst, New Jersey on October 15, 1928.

According to airships.net , the Graf Zeppelin was also the first to fly a scientific mission over the North Pole, the first to make regularly scheduled transatlantic passenger crossings by air, and the first commercial passenger flight to go around the world.

First round the world flight (" weltfahrt ")

The graf zeppelin flew around the world in a flight taking 57 hours and 31 minutes..

The Graf Zeppelin's most famous flight came in 1929 when it undertook an around-the-world voyage. The flight covered 21,250 miles in five legs, going from Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen (Germany), from Friedrichshafen to Tokyo, from Tokyo to Los Angeles, and from Los Angeles back to Lakehurst (and then back to Friedrichshafen again). At the time, the flight was a media sensation.

The Americans wanted the historic flight to begin and end in America, while the Germans wanted it to begin and end in Germany. As a compromise, it had two official beginnings and endings - one at Lakehurst and one at Friedrichshafen. The longest leg was the 102-hour flight to Tokyo across Siberia. It had planned to land in Moscow, but this was canceled because of bad weather. According to airships.net , Soviet dictator Stalin felt slighted and complained about skipping Moscow.

The gondola

The graf zeppelin's gondola boasted a lounge and 10 twin-bed private cabins..

The 98-foot-long gondola was luxurious - a level of luxury arguably unmatched in air travel today (flying on the Graf Zeppelin was only something the elite could afford). The gondola was also unheated and cold, so passengers would spend much of the time huddled in heavy winter coats or under layers of blankets. The only public space on the gondola was the lounge/dining room (approx. 16-foot square) located aft of the kitchen.

Ten small cabins with upper and lower berths accommodated the airship's twenty passengers. These were similar to those on a sleeping train and could be arranged as sofas during the day and as beds during the night. At the end of the corridor, the Graf Zeppelin had separate washrooms for men and women. Early flying was only for the high-paying elite (including Pan Am's Clippers), and the service focused on luxury much more than today.

World's longest and largest airship

At 776 feet long, the graf zeppelin was the largest airship until the hindenburg was built in the mid-1930s..

When the Graf Zeppelin was built, she was the longest and largest airship in the world, 776 feet long and 100 feet in diameter. While the Graf Zeppelin was not of the ideal aerodynamic shape or the best structurally, she was the best that was manageable within the limitations of the hangar at Friedrichshafen.

The Graf Zeppelin did not remain the world's largest airship for long. In 1936, the even larger Hindenburg class took flight (there were two airships in the class - the LZ 129 Hindenburg and the LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin). These giant airships were almost 804 feet long and 135 feet in diameter. But the Hindenburg was destroyed on its maiden flight, and the LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin was never brought into regular passenger service.

Could Zeppelins Be The Answer To Hydrogen Transportation?

On hearing the news of the hindenburg, the graf zeppelin completed its flight the next day and never carried another paying passenger again..

After a successful career flying around the world, her replacement, Hindenburg-class airships, were built. These were seen as the future of passenger flight, but that vision was to be dramatically shattered. But in 1937, the crew of the Graf Zeppelin heard the Hindenburg disaster on the radio on 6 May 1937. The passengers were not informed until after safely landing the next day in Germany. At the time, the Graf Zeppelin was returning from Brazil to Germany and was over the Canaries.

The diaster clarified that it wasn't safe to continue flying hydrogen-filled airships and that helium needed to be used. However, it was impossible to source enough helium, and the public faith in hydrogen was destroyed. That was the last passenger flight of the Graf Zeppelin, and she never carried another paying passenger again. She was broken up by order of Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe in March 1940.

The most distant human-made object

No spacecraft has gone farther than NASA's Voyager 1. Launched in 1977 to fly by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012 and continues to collect data.

Mission Type

What is Voyager 1?

Voyager 1 has been exploring our solar system for more than 45 years. The probe is now in interstellar space, the region outside the heliopause, or the bubble of energetic particles and magnetic fields from the Sun.

• Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to cross the heliosphere, the boundary where the influences outside our solar system are stronger than those from our Sun.
• Voyager 1 is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space.
• Voyager 1 discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and two new Jovian moons: Thebe and Metis.
• At Saturn, Voyager 1 found five new moons and a new ring called the G-ring.

In Depth: Voyager 1

Voyager 1 was launched after Voyager 2, but because of a faster route, it exited the asteroid belt earlier than its twin, having overtaken Voyager 2 on Dec. 15, 1977.

Voyager 1 at Jupiter

Voyager 1 began its Jovian imaging mission in April 1978 at a range of 165 million miles (265 million km) from the planet. Images sent back by January the following year indicated that Jupiter’s atmosphere was more turbulent than during the Pioneer flybys in 1973–1974.

Beginning on January 30, Voyager 1 took a picture every 96 seconds for a span of 100 hours to generate a color timelapse movie to depict 10 rotations of Jupiter. On Feb. 10, 1979, the spacecraft crossed into the Jovian moon system and by early March, it had already discovered a thin (less than 30 kilometers thick) ring circling Jupiter.

Voyager 1’s closest encounter with Jupiter was at 12:05 UT on March 5, 1979 at a range of about 174,000 miles (280,000 km). It encountered several of Jupiter’s Moons, including Amalthea, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, returning spectacular photos of their terrain, opening up completely new worlds for planetary scientists.

The most interesting find was on Io, where images showed a bizarre yellow, orange, and brown world with at least eight active volcanoes spewing material into space, making it one of the most (if not the most) geologically active planetary body in the solar system. The presence of active volcanoes suggested that the sulfur and oxygen in Jovian space may be a result of the volcanic plumes from Io which are rich in sulfur dioxide. The spacecraft also discovered two new moons, Thebe and Metis.

Voyager 1 at Saturn

Following the Jupiter encounter, Voyager 1 completed an initial course correction on April 9, 1979 in preparation for its meeting with Saturn. A second correction on Oct. 10, 1979 ensured that the spacecraft would not hit Saturn’s moon Titan.

Its flyby of the Saturn system in November 1979 was as spectacular as its previous encounter. Voyager 1 found five new moons, a ring system consisting of thousands of bands, wedge-shaped transient clouds of tiny particles in the B ring that scientists called “spokes,” a new ring (the “G-ring”), and “shepherding” satellites on either side of the F-ring—satellites that keep the rings well-defined.

During its flyby, the spacecraft photographed Saturn’s moons Titan, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea. Based on incoming data, all the moons appeared to be composed largely of water ice. Perhaps the most interesting target was Titan, which Voyager 1 passed at 05:41 UT on November 12 at a range of 2,500 miles (4,000 km). Images showed a thick atmosphere that completely hid the surface. The spacecraft found that the moon’s atmosphere was composed of 90% nitrogen. Pressure ad temperature at the surface was 1.6 atmospheres and 356 °F (–180°C), respectively.

Atmospheric data suggested that Titan might be the first body in the solar system (apart from Earth) where liquid might exist on the surface. In addition, the presence of nitrogen, methane, and more complex hydrocarbons indicated that prebiotic chemical reactions might be possible on Titan.

Voyager 1’s closest approach to Saturn was at 23:46 UT on 12 Nov. 12, 1980 at a range of 78,000 miles(126,000 km).

Voyager 1’s ‘Family Portrait’ Image

Following the encounter with Saturn, Voyager 1 headed on a trajectory escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.5 AU per year, 35° out of the ecliptic plane to the north, in the general direction of the Sun’s motion relative to nearby stars. Because of the specific requirements for the Titan flyby, the spacecraft was not directed to Uranus and Neptune.

The final images taken by the Voyagers comprised a mosaic of 64 images taken by Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990 at a distance of 40 AU of the Sun and all the planets of the solar system (although Mercury and Mars did not appear, the former because it was too close to the Sun and the latter because Mars was on the same side of the Sun as Voyager 1 so only its dark side faced the cameras).

This was the so-called “pale blue dot” image made famous by Cornell University professor and Voyager science team member Carl Sagan (1934-1996). These were the last of a total of 67,000 images taken by the two spacecraft.

Voyager 1’s Interstellar Mission

All the planetary encounters finally over in 1989, the missions of Voyager 1 and 2 were declared part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), which officially began on Jan. 1, 1990.

The goal was to extend NASA’s exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence, and “possibly beyond.” Specific goals include collecting data on the transition between the heliosphere, the region of space dominated by the Sun’s magnetic field and solar field, and the interstellar medium.

On Feb. 17, 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object in existence when, at a distance of 69.4 AU from the Sun when it “overtook” Pioneer 10.

On Dec. 16, 2004, Voyager scientists announced that Voyager 1 had reported high values for the intensity for the magnetic field at a distance of 94 AU, indicating that it had reached the termination shock and had now entered the heliosheath.

The spacecraft finally exited the heliosphere and began measuring the interstellar environment on Aug. 25, 2012, the first spacecraft to do so.

On Sept. 5, 2017, NASA marked the 40th anniversary of its launch, as it continues to communicate with NASA’s Deep Space Network and send data back from four still-functioning instruments—the cosmic ray telescope, the low-energy charged particles experiment, the magnetometer, and the plasma waves experiment.

The Golden Record

Each of the Voyagers contain a “message,” prepared by a team headed by Carl Sagan, in the form of a 12-inch (30 cm) diameter gold-plated copper disc for potential extraterrestrials who might find the spacecraft. Like the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11, the record has inscribed symbols to show the location of Earth relative to several pulsars.

The records also contain instructions to play them using a cartridge and a needle, much like a vinyl record player. The audio on the disc includes greetings in 55 languages, 35 sounds from life on Earth (such as whale songs, laughter, etc.), 90 minutes of generally Western music including everything from Mozart and Bach to Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson. It also includes 115 images of life on Earth and recorded greetings from then U.S. President Jimmy Carter (1924– ) and then-UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007).

By January 2024, Voyager 1 was about 136 AU (15 billion miles, or 20 billion kilometers) from Earth, the farthest object created by humans, and moving at a velocity of about 38,000 mph (17.0 kilometers/second) relative to the Sun.

National Space Science Data Center: Voyager 1

A library of technical details and historic perspective.

Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration

A comprehensive history of missions sent to explore beyond Earth.

Discover More Topics From NASA

Our Solar System

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Scientific Voyage

Being one of the most sought after Higher Education Institutions in India, Government College Of Engineering & Ceramic Technology takes pride in introducing a journal named SCIENTIFIC VOYAGE that throws light on significant areas in Science, Engineering, Management and Technology. The journal enables publication of pre-eminent research work by Researchers, Acamedicians, and Scientists pertaining to varied disciplines.

Goverment College of Engineering & Ceramic Technology was established in 1941 by Professor Sasadhar Ray who was an eminent and educationist and the first Principal of the college. At that time the college was named as Bengal Ceramic Institute Calcutta, which later on flowered into College of Ceramic Technology. Professor Ray was one of the pioneers in spreading ceramic education in India. He obtained his M.Sc. degree in Physics in 1930, as a student of Prof. Satyendranath Bose, from the University of Dacca having been place first in Class. He was a research scholar under Prof. K. S. Krishnan-F.R.S. in the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and served as a supervisor in Peripatetic Demonstration for Scheme of the Govt. of Bengal to popularize the ceramic manufacturing processes in the villages. He also worked for a brief period in the Industrial Research Laboratory, Dept. of Industries, Government of West Bengal.

The college started with certificate and diploma courses in Ceramic Technology with six other different courses to train people for various ceramic industries in the eastern and other regions of India. Prof. Roy organized a commercial Training- cum- Production unit at the institute to provide employment through practical training to the students. He formulated many developmental schemes with their successful implementation and introduced the concept of self- employment in the institute to cope with the problem of growing unemployment in the country. He was the pioneer in India to manufacture bone chinawares using indigenous raw materials on commercial basis and glazed pottery, sanitary wares, tiles and low-tension insulators from Gangetic silt. His contribution to ceramic education and industry has gone for and near within India and round the globe.

In the year 1962, B. Sc (Tech.) degree course in Ceramic Technology under the University of Calcutta was introduced in the institute, which was then renamed as College of Ceramic Technology and was undertaken by the Govt. of West Bengal. At that time more emphasis was given on Traditional Ceramics. Traditional consists of pottery including materials, cement, etc. and traditional glasses for windows and containers/bottles including crystal glasses and of course the infamous optical glasses for our eyes and cameras.

Then came Dr. B. N. Samaddar as the Principal of the College, who was trained in MIT, USA. He brought a sophisticated touch of modern ceramics like Nuclear Ceramics, Space Ceramics, Electronic and Magnetic Ceramics, Bio-Ceramics, Piezoelectrics and Ferroelectrics by continuous enriching the courses with a strong emphasis on Materials Science.

This college has seen the addition of two new B.Tech courses in Information Technology and Computer Science & Engineering which was initiated under the West Bengal University of Technology in the year 2000 and 2001 as well as the M.Tech course in Ceramic Technology which was introduced in the year 2006. The B.Tech and M.Tech courses of Ceramic Technology and the B.Tech course in Information Technology has already been accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA). The institute has also recently gained approval from AICTE to begin the M. Tech. course in Information Technology.