Vintage NASA: Voyager’s 1990 ‘Family Portrait’ News Conference

On June 6, 1990, following the conclusion of Voyager’s planetary explorations, mission representatives held a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to summarize key findings and answer questions from the media.

In the briefing, Voyager’s longtime project scientist Ed Stone, along with renowned science communicator Carl Sagan, also revealed the mission’s “Solar System Family Portrait,” a mosaic comprising images of six of the solar system’s eight planets. Carl Sagan was a member of the Voyager imaging team and instrumental in capturing these images and bringing them to the public.

These groundbreaking images, including the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” image of Earth, were taken by Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, when the spacecraft was beyond the orbit of Neptune — about 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun.

Nearly a half-century after their 1977 launches, Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 are still exploring, only now in interstellar space.

For more information about NASA’s Voyager mission, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
Courtesy of Ann Druyan
© Democritus Properties, LLC. 1994

00:00 Introduction
01:32 “Grand Tour” recap
05:50 Science discovery: Atmospheric weather on the outer planets
20:31 Science discovery: Magnetic fields of Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune
25:26 Science discovery: Rings of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
32:20 Science discovery: Moons of the outer solar system
44:16 Science discovery: Volcanic plumes on Jupiter’s moon Io
47:10 Looking ahead: Heliosphere and interstellar space
48:16 “Solar System Family Portrait” unveiled
52:40 Carl Sagan’s remarks
57:20 “Pale Blue Dot” unveiled
01:00:20 Press Q&A