Voyager gets off to a rocky start

Aug. 20, 1977: Dispatched to explore Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus several hundred million miles away, the first of two Voyager spacecraft got off to a rocky start when part of its guidance system failed after liftoff.

There was a suspicion that the Titan-Centaur rocket “may have given the Voyager vehicle a rather rough ride getting into space and that some of the spacecraft parts may have been badly jostled,” The Times reported.

But by early afternoon, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge were slowly getting the 1,800-pound, unmanned spacecraft back in shape, the newspaper said. Initial problems were later deemed to be minor and Voyager continued on “to Jupiter -- some 631 million miles and almost two years distant.”

On a microdot fastened to the spacecraft were the engraved names of Cal State professor Cortland Doan and 40 of his students, who assisted NASA in constructing models of Voyager that would “permit millions of Americans to follow its animated flight path on television.”