Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gary Flandro, an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, conceptualized a Planetary Grand Tour in 1964. This plan relied on a rare planetary alignment that occurs only once every 175 years to allow a single craft to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto using gravitational assists.
Voyager 2 crossed its own heliopause boundary on the 5th of November 2018 according to reports released in December 2018. Both probes now monitor conditions in the outer expanses beyond the influence of the solar wind after crossing their respective termination shocks.
Voyager 1 overtook Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 during the 1990s to become the most distant human-made object from Earth. The second probe took a shorter trajectory designed specifically for an optimal flyby of Titan which sent Voyager 1 out of the ecliptic plane.
By the 7th of October 2011, Voyager 1 generated 267.9 watts while Voyager 2 produced 269.2 watts. This represented roughly 57 percent of their initial launch power levels due to Plutonium-238 decaying with a half-life of 87.74 years causing power output to drop by about 0.79 percent annually.
Carl Sagan chaired a committee that selected contents for this combination time capsule and interstellar message alongside other experts including Timothy Ferris. The record includes symbolic directions on its cover for playing it back along with data detailing Earth's location for any civilization or far-future human that might recover either probe.