Carl Sagan was an American astronomer and cosmologist born in 1934 who launched the Voyager program in 1977 to study the outer planets of our solar system. Voyager 1 and 2 both visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, returning detailed images and scientific data about the planets and their moons. While Voyager 2 is still operational, both probes have now left the heliosphere and entered interstellar space, and Sagan is renowned for his contributions to planetary exploration through Voyager as well as his popular science books and television series Cosmos.