The Voyager Project, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, involves the lauching of two advanced spacecraft to explore the Jovian and Saturnian systems, as well as interplanetary space. The one-month lauch period opens on August 20, 1977, with arrivals at Jupiter in March and July of 1979, and at Saturn in November of 1980 and August of 1981. Gravity-assist swingbys of Jupiter are utilized in order to reduce the lauch energy demands needed to reach Saturn. In addition, a gravity-assist targeting option at Saturn will be maintained on the second-arriving Voyager for a possible continuation on to Uranus, with arrival in January of 1986. Flight through the Jovian and Saturnian systems will achieve close to moderate flyby encounters with several of the natural satellites, including special flyby geometry conditions for Io and Titan, as well as an Earth occultation of the spacecraft's radio signal by the rings of Saturn. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Voyager mission characteristics in order to establish a framework upon which to better understand the objectives and goals of the eleven scientific investigations which are described in subsequent papers.