Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Harvest Moon<\/p>\n
“We have been cautious because we’re dealing with one of the most important milestones in the history of exploration,” said Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This morning while I waded through the raspberry canes, scratching my hands as I plucked red-purple and golden white fruit, putting them in the small basket I use for such work, Voyager 1 sailed on through interstellar space, out beyond the solar wind.<\/p>\n
A professor from Iowa University asked reflexively if it was the equivalent of landing on the moon, maybe not he thought, but it’s still ‘Star-Trek’ stuff. \u00a0No question in my mind. \u00a0It’s beyond the equivalent; it triumphs. \u00a0Since those same raspberry picking hands held number 2 lead pencils in the first weeks of elementary school, space has been on my mind.<\/p>\n
In 1957 Sputnik pushed us all into the Space Age. \u00a0And things moved pretty fast. \u00a0The dog. Yuri Gagarin. John Glenn. \u00a0Neil Armstrong’s one small step certainly a highlight, an enormous imaginative leap. \u00a0A man. \u00a0Up there on the Hiroshima Moon. \u00a0How about that?<\/p>\n
Enough landings that few recall the last person to set foot on the moon. Harrison Schmitt, who followed Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17 off the landing craft. \u00a0Cernan, by the way, was the last to set foot off the moon. \u00a0This was in 1972. \u00a0All that moon walking in three brief years, 1969-1972.<\/p>\n
Yet. \u00a05 years later Voyager 1 and 2 launch. \u00a0Now 33 years later Voyager 1 has reached a point where its messages home take 17 hours to arrive. \u00a017 hours at the speed of light. \u00a0Three times as far away as Pluto. \u00a0Remember Pluto? \u00a0In the cold of space, beyond the barrier where the chill of the universe presses hard enough to push back the solar wind, Voyager 1 now travels. \u00a0A piece of us. \u00a0Put together by hands like mine picking raspberries.<\/p>\n
Kate’s former brother-in-law, now retired, worked as an engineer on Voyager 1. \u00a0He had has career, resigned. \u00a0But his work continued on, becoming in the process a signifier for persistence, for the turtle outpacing the hare. \u00a0The hare quit in 1972, satisfied with space-going trucking delivering supplies and few passengers to a space station doing, what?<\/p>\n
All hail rocket science. \u00a0A tip of the raspberry bucket to the little spacecraft as it carries human will physically where the mind has gone for so long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Harvest Moon “We have been cautious because we’re dealing with one of the most important milestones in the history of exploration,” said Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone. … Continue reading Man Picks Raspberries, Spacecraft Sails Through Interstellar Space<\/span>