So if you click on the video embedded in this little story, you’ll see there’s a section much later in the program at approximately: 57:22, where Carl Sagan commands “Slide!”
And that my friends is the Neil Armstrong moment. Carl gets to show the first attempt at collecting a “family portrait” of all the planets in the Solar System,but most particularly at that distance Voyager 1 was at, looking backward toward the Sun (not an easy shot to get). But more to the point at the end after he ruminates about the Pale Blue Dot photograph, Carl has some details, and thanks to give out.
See Carl fought a good fight for almost 10 years to get a photo of the Earth from either of the Voyager probes. And none of the scientists/staff managining either mission, NOR Nasa itself wanted to waste valuable time on something so superficial or frivolous or self-centered as an image of Earth from out on the edges of the Solar System. And every time that Carl got shot down, he would try, try again. Until the scientists/staffers finally ran out of actual “Science” they could do on Voyager 1. So they put it through the process of making it an official observation, got it on the schedule.
But man, they hat cut it close. They were right on the hairy edge of missing out, being to far away, in the wrong position to get a usuable image. But they got went throught processes, all the official channels. And Carl thanks each of the 3 JPL staffers who went to bat, and supported the celestial family portrait images, including then head of NASA, Richard Truly. It took NASA and JPL staffers to get that celestial family portrait done. But more to the point, the thing Sagan and his wife Ann really wanted,… that portrait of the Earth way out in the darkness of the Universe.
So enjoy the press conference. It was a celebration for its time. And Voyager 1 still keeps going and going and going.
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