Voyager 2

With all the budget cuts and general bureaucracy involved in working for the government, it constantly amazes me that people manage to get anything done. But they do amazing things! We're still getting fascinating new information from Voyagers 1 and 2 , spacecraft we launched 30 years ago! Voyager 1 is now over 14 light-hours from us, that's 9.6 billion miles. Humans created something that now exists at a distance which we could not have conceived of 200 years ago.

Everything we've ever known, all the animals, the plants, all the people you've ever met, all of history, every idea any human has ever had has happened here, on or within a few light-seconds of this tiny little blue speck whirling around a tiny little glowing dot. But somehow we managed to work together to create something that exists impossibly far away! And still works! Still sends back data, still changes our views of the universe.

Someone told me recently that they felt there are very few real surprises in life. I can't agree with that. I'm surprised every time I wake up, every time I walk out my front door, that I exist, that the universe exists and that we as part of it can observe it, and have the courage to think that maybe we can understand it, that we are capable of understanding it.

We are capable of wonders matched only by our capability for atrocities. That surprises me every day.