The greatest journey: Voyager's mission is coming to an end

Forty years after the launch of the Voyager probes, their mission is winding down - and with it, the careers of the aging engineers who steer them across the universe, writes Kim Tingley

In the early spring of 1977, Larry Zottarelli, a 40-year-old computer engineer at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, set out for Cape Canaveral, Florida, in his Toyota Corolla.

A Los Angeles native, he had never ventured as far as Tijuana (in Mexico, on the border with San Diego), but he had a per diem, and he liked to drive. Just east of Orlando, a causeway