Remember Voyager I? 

Launched by NASA back in 1977, it sailed past Jupiter and Saturn before becoming the first man-made object to leave the solar system. (And if you’re a Trekkie, you may also recall it had a key role in the first “Star Trek” movie.) 

Remarkably, NASA is still in contact with Voyager after more than 40 years in space. Even more amazingly, NASA recently helped give it a nudge to steer it away from a collision course with an asteroid, Dr. J.D. Polk, NASA’s chief medical officer, told me during a recent visit. Polk was dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine for Des Moines University before he returned to NASA to work at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.  

“Imagine your car, it’s in minus 450 degrees for 40 years, and you’re going to command it to start with your little remote control,” Polk said. “We sent a signal to fire the backup thrusters on Voyager to do a course correction, and that tiny little radio signal went millions of miles [13 billion, to be more precise].” Here’s a NASA article (https://go.nasa.gov/2HCWx4r) about how the space agency first fired up the thrusters back in December. 

“I’m thinking of what the computer program was back then — it was probably not even MS-DOS,” Polk said. “So at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, there’s some 1972 archaic computer with some dude sitting at it. … But it fired. We thought, that is just too cool. … I’m lucky if I can get my garage door opener to work nine times out of 10.” 

Speaking of interstellar space, Polk noted that NASA has a new “planet-hunter” satellite that will take over for the aging Kepler Observatory that has found hundreds of potentially habitable planets. 

“What we’re finding is, there’s a lot more of those planets than we thought there were,” he said. “Not to sound all geeky, but the likelihood of us being alone in this universe keeps going down with each time we discover more solar systems and rocky planets.” 

Of course, it’s debatable where mankind fits along the potential spectrum of “intelligent” life, Polk observed.

“We have a guy who’s the head of the Mission Science Directorate, and he says, ‘If we’re the smartest thing in the universe, I’m going to be really disappointed.’”