Forty years ago this coming Tuesday, a car-sized piece of equipment launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Thirty five years later, it became the first and only man-made object to enter interstellar space. Along the way, the Voyager probes (there were two) made headlines for flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and Titan. Fran Bagenal was a student when the Voyager probes launched, and wrote her doctoral thesis on data the probes collected around Jupiter. The professor of astrophysical and planetary science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and former chair of NASA's Outer Planet Assessment Group, has also worked on the Galileo, Deep Space 1, New Horizons and Juno missions. Nautilus caught up with Bagenal to discuss the legacy of Voyager and the future of manned and unmanned exploration of space.

Girls who have seen the first season of Hyperlinked, an original series on Google's YouTube Red, are 11% more likely to be interested in computer science careers than viewers who have not watched the show, according to a new study. SAN FRANCISCO -- Google is calling on Hollywood to give equal screen time to women and minorities after a new study the Internet giant funded found that most computer scientists on television shows and in the movies are played by white men. It does not inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in computer science, says Daraiha Greene, Google CS in Media program manager, multicultural strategy. "We are not trying to erase that image, but we want to diversify and show other people in these roles as well," Greene said. More than three-quarters of characters engaged with computer science are men and more than two-thirds are white while 17.2% are Asian and 15.5% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, according to the study from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

This new smart speaker is cheaper than the Dot--but is it worth it? If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY's newsroom and any business incentives. Smart home technology was once nothing more than a lofty dream, but we've finally reached a point where not only do we have a slew of smart devices to control nearly everything in our homes, but they're starting to be super affordable. Take the Amazon Echo Dot.

Netflix's stoner comedy "Disjointed" was not lighting anyone's fire this summer, according to critics. The newly released Netflix show became the lowest-reviewed series this summer on Rotten Tomatoes. The show stars Academy Award-winner Kathy Bates and follows her character who runs a medical marijuana dispenser. Netflix ordered 20 episodes and released 10 of them on Aug. 25. Rotten Tomatoes created a list of the summer's newest releases based on reviews.

Smart toys maker Sphero has released two new "Star Wars" droid for Force Friday II. Sphero now sells an app-controlled version of the classic "Star Wars" R2-D2 droid, as well as an evil version of BB-8 called BB-9E. Like Sphero's original app-controlled BB-8 droid from 2015, the new R2-D2 and BB-9E droids feature very detailed representation of their movie counterparts. However, BB-9E hasn't actually appeared in any of the films yet, but it's expected to make an appearance in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." First up is the Sphero R2-D2 app-controlled droid which is a 1:24 scale robot of the life-size version, accoridng to Mashable.

Star Wars fans – and their wallets – are set to feel the Force like never before. Toy-makers and tech companies have unveiled the latest line-up of Star Wars gadgets ahead of Force Friday II, with everything from augmented reality headsets to your own personal R2-D2, complete with holographic simulations. The haul, which will become available September 1, also includes a peek at characters set to become fan favorites in the upcoming installment, The Last Jedi, revealing BB-8's evil counterpart BB-9E, and the adorable wide-eyed Porgs. The engineers behind BB8 said when they were first presented with the challenge of creating a spherical robot by the Force Awakens director JJ Abrahms, they found several ways of creating the robot. One they settled on was to create a pendulum that sites inside the main body of the robot.

Finally, a martian rover to call your own. A Polish team of engineers who first created a rover in a NASA contest that eventually led to Curiosity have revealed a remote control, backpack-sized version of their'land drone' designed to be used on Earth. The $1400 'Turtle Rover' has a robot arm that can be remotely controlled, a HD camera for livestreaming, and can have everything from GoPro's to laser mapping attachments added to it. The'Turtle Rover' land drone is built on NASA-inspired suspension and can conquer every terrain and even be submerged under water, making it possible for everyone from researchers to wildlife photographers to explore what might otherwise be inaccessible parts of Earth Its makers boast it can conquer every terrain and even be submerged under water, making it possible for everyone from researchers to wildlife photographers. ''The only real limit is your imagination' are not just empty marketing words we use,' Simon Dzwonczyk, CEO and mechanical designer of Kell Ideas, the maker of Turtle Rover, told DailyMail.com.

Alexa is adding kids skills.' (Photo: Amazon) Amazon boasts more than 20,000 "skills" for its Alexa-powered Echo speakers and all the many other devices in which Alexa increasingly lends her voice. On Thursday, Amazon announced that the first "kids" skills are coming to Alexa, along with a parental consent framework that mom and dad must approve before Junior can try out these skills. Alexa, it's time for work: Ask Cortana to read Outlook emails At launch, Amazon says there will be nine skills for Alexa, including a SpongeBob challenge through Nickelodeon, a Sesame Street skill in which kids can call Elmo or play hide and seek with him, and an Amazon Storytime skill in which short stores designed for youngsters 5 through 12 are read aloud via say an Echo by such narrators as Saturday Night Live's Aidy Bryant, and Tom Kenny, who is the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants. Storytime content is free and doesn't require an Amazon Rapids or Audible subscription, though Audible does plan to contribute short stories in the future. Amazon has opened up the kids' skills platform to developers and says hundreds have expressed interest.

You've probably seen the Watson commercials, where what looks like a sentient box interacts with celebrities like Bob Dylan, Carrie Fisher, and Serena Williams; or doctors; or a young cancer survivor. Maybe you caught the IBM artificial intelligence technology's appearance in H&R Block's Super Bowl commercial starring Jon Hamm. "It is one of the most powerful tools our species has created. It helps doctors fight disease," Hamm says. "It can predict global weather patterns. It improves education for children everywhere. And now we unleash it on your taxes."