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News | January 22, 2021

35 years ago: voyager 2 explores uranus.

a photo of the launch of Voyager 2 and an illustration of the trajectories of Voyager 1 and 2 through the outer solar system

Left: The launch of Voyager 2 in 1977. Right: The trajectories of Voyager 1 and 2 through the outer solar system.

In January 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 became the first, and so far the only, spacecraft to explore Uranus, the second to last stop on its journey through the outer solar system. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages Voyagers 1 and 2, twin spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets.

Uranus seen by Voyager 2

Initially planned to fly by Jupiter and Saturn only, Voyager 2 took advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 175 years to complete two additional encounters in the outer solar system. Following Voyager 1’s successful exploration of Saturn and Titan in November 1980, on Jan. 8, 1981, NASA approved Voyager 2 to maintain a trajectory that, following its encounter with Saturn in August 1981, would then take it past Uranus in 1986, and if the spacecraft was still functioning, fly by Neptune in 1989.

Each Voyager spacecraft carried a suite of 11 instruments, including:

  • an imaging science system consisting of narrow-angle and wide-angle cameras to photograph the planet and its satellites.
  • a radio science system to determine the planet’s physical properties.
  • an infrared interferometer spectrometer to investigate local and global energy balance and atmospheric composition.
  • an ultraviolet spectrometer to measure atmospheric properties.
  • a magnetometer to analyze the planet’s magnetic field and interaction with the solar wind.
  • a plasma spectrometer to investigate microscopic properties of plasma ions.
  • a low energy charged particle device to measure fluxes and distributions of ions.
  • a cosmic ray detection system to determine the origin and behavior of cosmic radiation.
  • a planetary radio astronomy investigation to study radio emissions from Jupiter.
  • a photopolarimeter to measure the planet’s surface composition.
  • a plasma wave system to study the planet’s magnetosphere.

Voyager drawing - 1200

At the time of the Voyager encounter, Uranus had five known moons and a set of dark rings first observed the year the spacecraft left Earth. Astronomers had named the moons, in order of distance from the planet, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon, after characters in works by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Because of Uranus’ great distance from the Sun, engineers made changes to Voyager’s imaging techniques to accommodate light levels only 25% of what they were during the Saturn encounter. Engineers programmed image motion compensation techniques into Voyager’s computer to maintain clear photographs at the required 15-second exposure times coupled with the spacecraft’s velocity. NASA also upgraded the ground-based tracking antennas of the Deep Space Network to increase their sensitivity to receive Voyager’s signals from Uranus’ distance.

Uranus and rings, side by side images

Voyager 2 began to observe Uranus on November 4, 1985, by creating a series of time-lapse videos of the planet and its surroundings. Due to Uranus’ axial tilt of nearly 98 degrees to its orbital plane (the planet is basically lying on its side), Voyager 2’s encounter resembled aiming at a bull’s eye, with the planet at the center and its moons and rings orbiting around it. Due to this unusual orientation, the Sun illuminated only the southern hemispheres of the planet and its moons. It also required Voyager 2 to complete its close encounter observations in just a few hours, compared with several days for the Jupiter and Saturn flybys. On Dec. 30, Voyager 2 discovered its first new moon, eventually named Puck, orbiting closer to Uranus than Miranda. Engineers at JPL resolved an issue with the spacecraft’s imaging system that resulted in highly streaked photographs just three days before the closest encounter.

​ - John Uri NASA Johnson Space Center

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27 Years Ago: Voyager 2’s Visit to Uranus

Image of Uranus’ crescent taken by a departing Voyager 2 on January 25, 1986 (NASA/JPL)

27 years ago today, January 24, 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft sped past Uranus, becoming simultaneously the first and last spacecraft to visit the blue-tinged gas giant, third largest planet in the Solar System.

The image above shows the crescent-lit Uranus as seen by Voyager 2 from a distance of about 965,000 km (600,000 miles.) At the time the spacecraft had already passed Uranus and was looking back at the planet on its way outwards toward Neptune .

Although composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, trace amounts of methane in Uranus’ uppermost atmosphere absorb most of the red wavelengths of light, making the planet appear a pale blue color.

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Image of the 1,500-km-wide Oberon acquired by Voyager 2 on Jan. 24, 1986 (NASA/JPL)

The second of NASA’s twin space explorers (although it launched first) Voyager 2 came within 81,800 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranus on January 24, 1986, gathering images of the sideways planet, its rings and several of its moons. Voyager 2 also discovered the presence of a magnetic field around Uranus, as well as 10 new small moons.

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Three moons discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986 (NASA/JPL)

Data gathered by Voyager 2 revealed that Uranus’ rate of rotation is 17 hours, 14 minutes.

At the time of this writing, Voyager 2 is 15,184,370,900 km from Earth and steadily moving toward the edge of the Solar System at a speed of about 3.3 AU per year. At that distance, signals from Voyager take just over 14 hours and 4 minutes to reach us.

See images from Voyager 2’s visit of Uranus here , and check out a video of the August 20, 1977 launch below along with more images from the historic Voyager mission’s “Grand Tour” of the outer Solar System.

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16 Replies to “27 Years Ago: Voyager 2’s Visit to Uranus”

I was in 6th grade and remember reading about it in the paper.

I remember being impatient to see these photos in Owl magazine.

I didn’t even exist in 1986! It’s sad to think, even if they launched tomorrow, we’d probably not see new images of Uranus till 2022? I’ll be an old fossil by then!

Hey… careful with the “old fossil” comments. Some of us here are virtually Precambrian by your standards. 😉

I believe that’s my lawn you’re standing on. 🙂

Those wonderful, surprising moons with the great names. I think there was a PBS Nova at the time featuring a lot of Gene Shoemaker explaining the theories of formation and structure. This was a big deal at the time, we’re used to finding all kinds of new stuff these days, but those were new worlds we only had vague imagery of until Vger2. I grew up with a lot of fuzzy blobs and dim, unresolved points of light. Thanks for the nostalgia, Jason!

It went to Ur anus hehe. http://www.ficksitall.blogspot.com

too bad voyager didn’t probe uranus more thoroughly. it may have found kling-ons

And you are what? 12 years old? And that poor attempt at a joke is way older than you are. Jeez,,,,

lighten up, pops!

Great images. To think these were made 27 years ago, quite a major feat. I’m following these 2 really closely. Hope they break to interstellar space soon.

Back then our local public access cable station would broadcast the NASA channel in the evenings and off hours. I remember sitting in my living room watching live full screen pictures coming video from Voyager as it approached Neptune in 1989.

So amazing being able to watch “live pictures” from the edge of our solar system sitting on my couch back then.

PBS did a lot during the encounter. This was the first Voyager encounter in the cable-TV age, so a few channels (mostly PEG or “community access” channels) were covering the fly-by. Mostly we were just showing JPL computer displays, but it was a glimpse of a new era in communications and public access.

I remember Billions and Biliions by Carl Sagan.

What an amazing accomplishment by only 2 little probes with no more camera power than your average cell phone uses these days. Imagine what new discoveries we could make if we sent new probes out to the gas giants today ! Too bad human kind is too busy fighting each other, than expanding our knowledge of our beautiful universe.

Curious that the Cloud Planet is “hotter at its equator than at its poles”. Mysterious source of internal heat? Also intriguing: possible retrograde rotation. What disturbance in time, laid a world low?

If the ice giant could only speak through covering veils cast, What turbulent events might surface from the hidden past?

What wonders surreal lie below the bands of rapid storm? What secrets lay concealed, under decks of mist unborn?

Sun sheds its cold light, on the fallen Giant in realm of ice. In its layered depth of gas, what source of heat does entice?

Hazy orb of aquamarine, with dark, hefty-block Rings encircled, Uranus rolls along orbit, the revolving moons shadow wreathed.

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News | January 29, 2001

Fifteenth anniversary of voyager 2 flyby of uranus in 1986.

Posted by Larry Klaes from the History of Astronomy Discussion Group

The first unmanned space probe flyby in history of the planet Uranus by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986 should have been an exciting one in the history of planetary exploration:

  • Uranus was the first planet discovered by humans not thousands of years before written history and civilization, but in relatively moderns times - on March 13, 1781 by German musician turned English astronomer William Herschel, to be exact. I know others may have viewed Uranus telescopically before Herschel, be he was the first one to figure out that it was a planet and not a comet or star. Theoretically one could see Uranus with unaided vision from Earth, but it would have been too dim for our ancestors to really notice it, even in their non-light polluted night skies (at least none ever said they did that made it to our time).
  • Uranus was later found to be a world tipped on its side compared to the rest of the known planets in the Sol system. Only later did astronomers learn that Pluto was tipped even moreso on its side and Venus was knocked all the way around from our perspective. With an axial tilt of almost 98 degrees (compare this to Earth's 23.5 degree tilt), Uranus' poles spend roughly half their time in the planet's 84-year solar orbit either in constant darkness or light.
  • The discovery of a ring system around Uranus in 1977 gave the first real evidence that, rather than being unique to Saturn, ring systems around Jovian worlds are probably common. Indeed, the next few years - thanks to the Voyager probes - would show that these rings were indeed standard features for all of the gas giant planets of our Sol system.
  • The five known moons of Uranus were virtually unknown little worlds, but after the Voyager probes' experiences with the exciting satellites of Jupiter and Saturn from 1979 through 1981, it was assumed they too would hold exciting new surprises for us.
  • Voyager 2 was not meant to visit Uranus after Saturn, having already come from a scaled-down version of the Grand Tour of the outer planets. However, since Voyager 1 did make it to Saturn and perform a close examination of its largest moon Titan, Voyager 2 was given the go-ahead to Uranus and eventually Neptune in 1989 (it should be noted that Voyager 2 also survived being shut off in 1981 to allegedly save some bucks by the Reagan Administration, I kid you not). So with this rare bonus in hand, scientists were most eager to get their first close-up views of this bizarre alien world way out in the outer Sol system. But fate likes to play games with human expectations, and the Universe itself certainly does not cater to our wants and desires. The Voyager 2 mission to Uranus did go off as planned, but its two main problems had nothing to do with the space probe itself:
  • Uranus itself did not turn out to be as "exciting" as the other two previously explored Jovian worlds, Jupiter and Saturn. The clouds were a bland and featureless shade of blue. The rings were dark and thin. The moons did not look much different from the other icy satellites of Jupiter and especially Saturn. Miranda was the only real exception, looking like a world that had been literally torn apart and smashed back together, complete with 20-kilometer high sheer ice cliffs.

One would think that exploring any new world for the first time in what was (and still is) the early days of our testing the waters of deep space would be exciting enough, but somehow the public and press had gotten spoiled by the amazing wonders at Jupiter and Saturn (not to mention many space-based science fiction flicks), and Uranus was just not cutting the bill, even if it was tipped on its side.

  • The other deflecting event took place just four days after Voyager 2's closest flyby: The Space Shuttle Challenger 51-L mission ended tragically before it could even get into Earth orbit, where a leak in a solid rocket booster acted like a torch on the external fuel tank and caused it to explode, turning the shuttle into scrap metal and killing the seven astronauts on board - one of whom was going to be the first teacher in space.

This flight alone killed more astronauts than all previous manned space tragedies combined: The lone cosmonaut of Soyuz 1 in 1967 and the three cosmonauts of Soyuz 11 who had just returned from a thirty-day stay on the Soviet Salyut 1 space station in June of 1971 (the three astronauts of the Apollo 1 crew were killed in a fire during a ground test in 1967).

Needless to say, the press attention almost immediately evaporated from the lone space robot and the dull world it had been monitoring over two billion kilometers away to Cape Canaveral and NASA and did not come back.

Despite all this negativity from the general human perspective towards the Voyager 2 Uranus encounter, many new and important items were learned about this new world. Among them was the discovery of ten new moons circling the planet, a powerful magnetic field tipped sixty degrees to the planet's axis, and strong evidence that the outer Sol system went through a very violent period of collisions with other celestial bodies in the early days of our system's creation, judging by what happened to Uranus' moons and the planet itself, having been knocked completely on its side.

While Voyager 2 certainly did give us more information on Uranus than all previous Earth-based studies combined, no quick flyby can do what an orbiting probe can, as Galileo has certainly shown with Jupiter since 1995 and Cassini will with Saturn starting in 2004.

Though I would certainly like to be proven wrong here, there are no serious plans to orbit or even visit Uranus again any time soon.

For more on the Voyager 2 mission to Uranus, read here:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/vgr_ura.html

For more on the Voyager probes, go here and scroll down a bit for the Uranus encounter information:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/voyager.html

Web sites on Uranus:

http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/uranus.html

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/uranuspage.html

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First to visit all four giant planets

voyager 2 uranus video

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. The probe is now in interstellar space, the region outside the heliopause, or the bubble of energetic particles and magnetic fields from the Sun.

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What is Voyager 2?

NASA's Voyager 2 is the second spacecraft to enter interstellar space. On Dec. 10, 2018, the spacecraft joined its twin – Voyager 1 – as the only human-made objects to enter the space between the stars.

  • Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to study all four of the solar system's giant planets at close range.
  • Voyager 2 discovered a 14th moon at Jupiter.
  • Voyager 2 was the first human-made object to fly past Uranus.
  • At Uranus, Voyager 2 discovered 10 new moons and two new rings.
  • Voyager 2 was the first human-made object to fly by Neptune.
  • At Neptune, Voyager 2 discovered five moons, four rings, and a "Great Dark Spot."

In Depth: Voyager 2

The two-spacecraft Voyager missions were designed to replace original plans for a “Grand Tour” of the planets that would have used four highly complex spacecraft to explore the five outer planets during the late 1970s.

NASA canceled the plan in January 1972 largely due to anticipated costs (projected at $1 billion) and instead proposed to launch only two spacecraft in 1977 to Jupiter and Saturn. The two spacecraft were designed to explore the two gas giants in more detail than the two Pioneers (Pioneers 10 and 11) that preceded them.

In 1974, mission planners proposed a mission in which, if the first Voyager was successful, the second one could be redirected to Uranus and then Neptune using gravity assist maneuvers.

Each of the two spacecraft was equipped with a slow-scan color TV camera to take images of the planets and their moons and each also carried an extensive suite of instruments to record magnetic, atmospheric, lunar, and other data about the planetary systems.

The design of the two spacecraft was based on the older Mariners, and they were known as Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 until March 7, 1977, when NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher (1919-1991) announced that they would be renamed Voyager.

Power was provided by three plutonium oxide radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) mounted at the end of a boom.

Voyager 2 at Jupiter

Against a black background, an enormous sphere in various shades of orange fills most of the frame and extends beyond the picture, to the left, top, and bottom. Ribbons of different shades of orange and white circle the planet horizontally, some looking like they were folded ver on themselves repeatedly, like hard ribbon candy. The most prominent featue is a large swirl of deep orange at the center of the frame, looking like it's spinning clockwise.

Voyager 2 began transmitting images of Jupiter April 24, 1979, for time-lapse movies of atmospheric circulation. Unlike Voyager 1, Voyager 2 made close passes to the Jovian moons on its way into the system, with scientists especially interested in more information from Europa and Io (which necessitated a 10 hour-long “volcano watch”).

During its encounter, it relayed back spectacular photos of the entire Jovian system, including its moons Callisto, Ganymede, Europa (at a range of about 127,830 miles or 205,720 kilometers, much closer than Voyager 1), Io, and Amalthea, all of which had already been surveyed by Voyager 1.

Voyager 2’s closest encounter to Jupiter was at 22:29 UT July 9, 1979, at a range of about 400,785 miles (645,000 kilometers). It transmitted new data on the planet’s clouds, its newly discovered four moons, and ring system as well as 17,000 new pictures.

When the earlier Pioneers flew by Jupiter, they detected few atmospheric changes from one encounter to the second, but Voyager 2 detected many significant changes, including a drift in the Great Red Spot as well as changes in its shape and color.

With the combined cameras of the two Voyagers, at least 80% of the surfaces of Ganymede and Callisto were mapped out to a resolution of about 3 miles (5 kilometers).

Voyager 2 at Saturn

A serene Saturn, encircled by its complex ring system.

Following a course correction two hours after its closest approach to Jupiter, Voyager 2 sped to Saturn, its trajectory determined to a large degree by a decision made in January 1981, to try to send the spacecraft to Uranus and Neptune later in the decade.

Its encounter with the sixth planet began Aug. 22, 1981, two years after leaving the Jovian system, with imaging of the moon Iapetus. Once again, Voyager 2 repeated the photographic mission of its predecessor, although it actually flew about 14,290 miles (23,000 kilometers) closer to Saturn. The closest encounter to Saturn was at 01:21 UT Aug. 26, 1981, at a range of about 63,000 miles (101,000 kilometers).

The spacecraft provided more detailed images of the ring “spokes” and kinks, and also the F-ring and its shepherding moons, all found by Voyager 1. Voyager 2’s data suggested that Saturn’s A-ring was perhaps only about 980 feet (300 meters) thick.

As it flew behind and up past Saturn, the probe passed through the plane of Saturn’s rings at a speed of 8 miles per second (13 kilometers per second). For several minutes during this phase, the spacecraft was hit by thousands of micron-sized dust grains that created “puff” plasma as they were vaporized. Because the vehicle’s attitude was repeatedly shifted by the particles, attitude control jets automatically fired many times to stabilize the vehicle.

During the encounter, Voyager 2 also photographed the Saturn moons Hyperion (the “hamburger moon”), Enceladus, Tethys, and Phoebe as well as the more recently discovered Helene, Telesto and Calypso.

Voyager 2 at Uranus

Ariel - Highest Resolution Color Picture

Although Voyager 2 had fulfilled its primary mission goals with the two planetary encounters, mission planners directed the veteran spacecraft to Uranus—a journey that would take about 4.5 years.

In fact, its encounter with Jupiter was optimized in part to ensure that future planetary flybys would be possible.

The Uranus encounter’s geometry was also defined by the possibility of a future encounter with Neptune: Voyager 2 had only 5.5 hours of close study during its flyby.

Voyager 2 was the first human-made object to fly past the planet Uranus.

Long-range observations of the planet began Nov. 4, 1985, when signals took approximately 2.5 hours to reach Earth. Light conditions were 400 times less than terrestrial conditions. Closest approach to Uranus took place at 17:59 UT Jan. 24, 1986, at a range of about 50,640 miles (81,500 kilometers).

During its flyby, Voyager 2 discovered 10 new moons (given such names as Puck, Portia, Juliet, Cressida, Rosalind, Belinda, Desdemona, Cordelia, Ophelia, and Bianca -- obvious allusions to Shakespeare), two new rings in addition to the “older” nine rings, and a magnetic field tilted at 55 degrees off-axis and off-center.

The spacecraft found wind speeds in Uranus’ atmosphere as high as 450 miles per hour (724 kilometers per hour) and found evidence of a boiling ocean of water some 497 miles (800 kilometers) below the top cloud surface. Its rings were found to be extremely variable in thickness and opacity.

Voyager 2 also returned spectacular photos of Miranda, Oberon, Ariel, Umbriel, and Titania, five of Uranus’ larger moons. In flying by Miranda at a range of only 17,560 miles (28,260 kilometers), the spacecraft came closest to any object so far in its nearly decade-long travels. Images of the moon showed a strange object whose surface was a mishmash of peculiar features that seemed to have no rhyme or reason. Uranus itself appeared generally featureless.

The spectacular news of the Uranus encounter was interrupted the same week by the tragic Challenger accident that killed seven astronauts during their space shuttle launch Jan. 28, 1986.

Voyager 2 at Neptune

Neptune Full Disk View

Following the Uranus encounter, the spacecraft performed a single midcourse correction Feb. 14, 1986—the largest ever made by Voyager 2—to set it on a precise course to Neptune.

Voyager 2’s encounter with Neptune capped a 4.3 billion-mile (7 billion-kilometer) journey when, on Aug. 25, 1989, at 03:56 UT, it flew about 2,980 miles (4,800 kilometers) over the cloud tops of the giant planet, the closest of its four flybys. It was the first human-made object to fly by the planet. Its 10 instruments were still in working order at the time.

During the encounter, the spacecraft discovered six new moons (Proteus, Larissa, Despina, Galatea, Thalassa, and Naiad) and four new rings.

The planet itself was found to be more active than previously believed, with 680-mile (1,100-kilometer) per hour winds. Hydrogen was found to be the most common atmospheric element, although the abundant methane gave the planet its blue appearance.

Images revealed details of the three major features in the planetary clouds—the Lesser Dark Spot, the Great Dark Spot, and Scooter.

Voyager photographed two-thirds of Neptune’s largest moon Triton, revealing the coldest known planetary body in the solar system and a nitrogen ice “volcano” on its surface. Spectacular images of its southern hemisphere showed a strange, pitted cantaloupe-type terrain.

The flyby of Neptune concluded Voyager 2’s planetary encounters, which spanned an amazing 12 years in deep space, virtually accomplishing the originally planned “Grand Tour” of the solar system, at least in terms of targets reached if not in science accomplished.

Voyager 2's Interstellar Mission

Once past the Neptune system, Voyager 2 followed a course below the ecliptic plane and out of the solar system. Approximately 35 million miles (56 million kilometers) past the encounter, Voyager 2’s instruments were put in low power mode to conserve energy.

After the Neptune encounter, NASA formally renamed the entire project the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM).

Of the four spacecraft sent out to beyond the environs of the solar system in the 1970s, three of them -- Voyagers 1 and 2 and Pioneer 11 -- were all heading in the direction of the solar apex, i.e., the apparent direction of the Sun’s travel in the Milky Way galaxy, and thus would be expected to reach the heliopause earlier than Pioneer 10 which was headed in the direction of the heliospheric tail.

In November 1998, 21 years after launch, nonessential instruments were permanently turned off, leaving seven instruments still operating.

At 9.6 miles per second (15.4 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun, it will take about 19,390 years for Voyager 2 to traverse a single light year.

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Asif Siddiqi

Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration

Through the turn of the century, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) continued to receive ultraviolet and particle fields data. For example, on Jan. 12, 2001, an immense shock wave that had blasted out of the outer heliosphere on July 14, 2000, finally reached Voyager 2. During its six-month journey, the shock wave had plowed through the solar wind, sweeping up and accelerating charged particles. The spacecraft provided important information on high-energy shock-energized ions.

On Aug. 30, 2007, Voyager 2 passed the termination shock and then entered the heliosheath. By Nov. 5, 2017, the spacecraft was 116.167 AU (about 10.8 billion miles or about 17.378 billion kilometers) from Earth, moving at a velocity of 9.6 miles per second (15.4 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun, heading in the direction of the constellation Telescopium. At this velocity, it would take about 19,390 years to traverse a single light-year.

On July 8, 2019, Voyager 2 successfully fired up its trajectory correction maneuver thrusters and will be using them to control the pointing of the spacecraft for the foreseeable future. Voyager 2 last used those thrusters during its encounter with Neptune in 1989.

The spacecraft's aging attitude control thrusters have been experiencing degradation that required them to fire an increasing and untenable number of pulses to keep the spacecraft's antenna pointed at Earth. Voyager 1 had switched to its trajectory correction maneuver thrusters for the same reason in January 2018.

To ensure that both vintage robots continue to return the best scientific data possible from the frontiers of space, mission engineers are implementing a new plan to manage them. The plan involves making difficult choices, particularly about instruments and thrusters.

The Voyager spacecraft against a sparkly blue background

National Space Science Data Center: Voyager 2

A library of technical details and historic perspective.

Colorful book cover for Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration. It features spacecraft cutouts against a bright primary colors.

A comprehensive history of missions sent to explore beyond Earth.

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Where are they now.

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Galleries of Images Voyager Took

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before starting their journey toward interstellar space. Here you'll find some of those iconic images, including "The Pale Blue Dot" - famously described by Carl Sagan - and what are still the only up-close images of Uranus and Neptune.

Jupiters Great Spot

Photography of Jupiter began in January 1979, when images of the brightly banded planet already exceeded the best taken from Earth. Voyager 1 completed its Jupiter encounter in early April, after taking almost 19,000 pictures and many other scientific measurements. Voyager 2 picked up the baton in late April and its encounter continued into August. They took more than 33,000 pictures of Jupiter and its five major satellites.

Image of Saturn

The Voyager 1 and 2 Saturn encounters occurred nine months apart, in November 1980 and August 1981. Voyager 1 is leaving the solar system. Voyager 2 completed its encounter with Uranus in January 1986 and with Neptune in August 1989, and is now also en route out of the solar system.

Image of Uranus

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, in January. At its closet, the spacecraft came within 81,800 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranus's cloudtops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and the magnetic environment surrounding Uranus.

Image of Neptune

In the summer of 1989, NASA's Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe the planet Neptune, its final planetary target. Passing about 4,950 kilometers (3,000 miles) above Neptune's north pole, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years ago. Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) from Neptune's largest moon, Triton, the last solid body the spacecraft will have an opportunity to study.

Image of Neptune

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Voyager 2: An iconic spacecraft that's still exploring 45 years on

The interstellar vagabond continues to explore the cosmos along with its twin, Voyager 1.

Voyager spacecraft against a backdrop of stars as it travels through space.

Voyager 2 as the backup

Jupiter and saturn flyby, uranus and neptune flyby, voyager 2's interstellar adventure, voyager 2's legacy, additional information.

Voyager 2, was the first of two twin probes NASA sent to investigate the outer planets of our solar system. 

The probe was launched aboard a Titan IIIE-Centaur from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 41 (previously Launch Complex 41) on Aug. 20, 1977, its twin spacecraft Voyager 1 was launched about two weeks later on Sept. 5. NASA planned for the Voyager spacecraft to take advantage of an alignment of the outer planets that takes place only every 176 years. The alignment would allow both probes to swing from one planet to the next, with a gravity boost to help them along the way.

While Voyager 1 focused on Jupiter and Saturn , Voyager 2 visited both those planets and also ventured to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2's mission to those last two planets would be humanity's only visit in the 20th century.

Related: Celebrate 45 years of Voyager with these amazing images of our solar system (gallery)

Voyager 2 is now traveling through interstellar space. As of early November 2018, NASA announced that Voyager 2 had crossed the outer edge of our solar system ( Voyager 1 crossed the boundary into interstellar space in 2012. ) Voyager 2 is now approximately 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) away from Earth and counting!  

Although there was not enough money in Voyager 2's budget to guarantee it would still work when flying past Uranus and Neptune, its trajectory was designed to go past those planets anyway. If the spacecraft were still working after Saturn, NASA could try to take pictures of the other planets.

Voyager 2 was ready as a backup for Voyager 1. If Voyager 1 failed when taking pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, NASA was prepared to alter Voyager 2's path to follow Voyager 1's trajectory. It would cut off the Uranus and Neptune option, but still, preserve the possibility of capturing images.

The backup plan was never executed, though, because Voyager 1 went on to make many discoveries at Jupiter and Saturn, working well enough for NASA to carry out its original plans for Voyager 2.

Voyager 2 reached Jupiter in 1979, two years after launching from Cape Canaveral. Since Voyager 1 had just gone through the system four months earlier, Voyager 2's arrival allowed NASA to take valuable comparison shots of Jupiter and its moons. It captured changes in the Great Red Spot and also resolved some of the moon's surfaces in greater detail.

Voyager 2 took pictures of many of Jupiter's satellites. Among its most spectacular findings were pictures from the icy moon Europa . Voyager 2 snapped detailed photos of the icy moon's cracks from 128,000 miles (205,996 km) away and revealed no change in elevation anywhere on the moon's surface.

Proving that moons are abundant around the outer planets, Voyager 2 happened to image Adrastea, a small moon of Jupiter, only months after Voyager 1 found two other Jupiter moons, Thebe and Metis. Adrastea is exceptionally small, only about 19 miles (30.5 kilometers) in diameter at the smallest estimate.

Next in line was Saturn. Voyager 2  became the third spacecraft to visit Saturn when it arrived at its closest point to the ringed planet on Aug. 26, 1981, and took hundreds of pictures of the planet, its moons and its rings . Suspecting that Saturn might be circled by many ringlets, scientists conducted an experiment. They watched the star Delta Scorpii for nearly two and a half hours as it passed through the plane of the rings. As expected, the star's flickering light revealed ringlets as small as 330 feet (100 meters) in diameter. 

Voyager 2's made its closest approach to Uranus on Jan. 24, 1986, becoming the first spacecraft to visit the ice giant. The probe made several observations of the planet, noting that the south pole was facing the sun and that its atmosphere is about 85% hydrogen and 15% helium. 

Additionally, Voyager 2 discovered rings around Uranus, 10 new moons and a magnetic field that, oddly, was 55 degrees off the planet's axis. Astronomers are still puzzling over Uranus' orientation today.

Voyager 2's pictures of the moon Miranda revealed it to be perhaps the strangest moon in the solar system. Its jumbled-up surface appears as though it was pushed together and broken apart several times.

The spacecraft then made it to Neptune , reaching the closest point on Aug. 25, 1989. It skimmed about 3,000 miles from the top of the planet's atmosphere and spotted five new moons as well as four rings around the planet. Remarkably, Voyager 2 is currently the only human-made object to have flown by the intriguing ice giant, according to NASA .

On November 5, 2018, Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause — the boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space. At this stage, the probe was 119 astronomical units from the sun. (One AU is the average Earth-sun distance, which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) Voyager 1 made the crossing at nearly the same distance, 121.6 AU.

According to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) , Voyager 2 has enough fuel to keep its instruments running until at least 2025. By then, the spacecraft will be approximately 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion kilometers) away from the sun. 

But Voyager 2 is destined to roam the Milky Way long after its instruments have stopped working.

In about 40,000 years Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248, according to NASA JPL. The cosmic vagabond will continue its journey through interstellar space and pass 4.3 light-years, (25 trillion miles) from Sirius in about 296,000 years. 

Voyager 2's observations paved the way for later missions. The Cassini spacecraft, which was at Saturn between 2004 and 2017, tracked down evidence of liquid water at the planet's icy moons several decades after the Voyagers initially revealed the possible presence of water. Cassini also mapped the moon, Titan , after the Voyagers took pictures of its thick atmosphere.

Voyager 2's images of Uranus and Neptune also serve as a baseline for current observations of those giant planets. In 2014, astronomers were surprised to see giant storms on Uranus — a big change from when Voyager 2 flew by the planet in 1986. 

To see where Voyager 2 is now you can check out the mission status with resources from NASA . Learn more about the iconic spacecraft with the National Air and Space Museum .  

Bibliography

NASA. In depth: Voyager 2. NASA. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from www.solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-2/in-depth/

NASA. Voyager - mission status. NASA. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from www.voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

NASA. Voyager - the interstellar mission. NASA. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from www. voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar-mission

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Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

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Voyager 2: First Spacecraft at Uranus

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The Daily Digest

The Daily Digest

New images of Uranus are changing what we thought we knew about the planet

Posted: February 11, 2024 | Last updated: February 11, 2024

<p><span>The James Webb Space Telescope has helped astronomers and researchers achieve a number of amazing discoveries in the short time it's been active. But arguably one of the best has been how it changed our perception of Uranus. </span></p>

Take a look at the stunning photos

The James Webb Space Telescope has helped astronomers and researchers achieve a number of amazing discoveries in the short time it's been active. But arguably one of the best has been how it changed our perception of Uranus. 

<p><span>Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun in our solar system and it has been thought of as a rather uniform blue ever since the first image of the planet taken by Voyager 2. But all of that is changing thanks to new images of the planet. </span></p>

Uranus is our solar systems forgotten planet

Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun in our solar system and it has been thought of as a rather uniform blue ever since the first image of the planet taken by Voyager 2. But all of that is changing thanks to new images of the planet. 

<p><span>Voyager 2 did help reveal some interesting facts about Uranus and the moons that orbit the planet according to Smithsonian Magazine. For example, researchers predicted at least five of Uranus’ moons likely were home to hidden oceans. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech</p>

Voyager 2 revealed a lot about Uranus

Voyager 2 did help reveal some interesting facts about Uranus and the moons that orbit the planet according to Smithsonian Magazine. For example, researchers predicted at least five of Uranus’ moons likely were home to hidden oceans. 

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

<p><span>Moreover, Voyager actually visited the planet and snapped the very first image of the cool blue planet that is often an afterthought in our crowded solar system. But that very first image opened a whole world of new possibilities. </span></p>

Snapping the first picture of the planet

Moreover, Voyager actually visited the planet and snapped the very first image of the cool blue planet that is often an afterthought in our crowded solar system. But that very first image opened a whole world of new possibilities. 

<p><span>NASA has noted that ten new moons were discovered when Voyager stopped in at 50,600 miles or 81,600 kilometers from the planet, and we also found Uranus had 2 more rings than we had previously thought plus a strong magnetic field. </span></p>

Uranus has more moons and rings than we knew

NASA has noted that ten new moons were discovered when Voyager stopped in at 50,600 miles or 81,600 kilometers from the planet, and we also found Uranus had 2 more rings than we had previously thought plus a strong magnetic field. 

<p><span>Astronomers also learned that Uranus had a rate of rotation that is seventeen hours and fourteen minutes as well as a temperature at its equatorial region that was paradoxically a lot like the temperature at both of the planet’s poles.  </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By NASA</p>

We learned about the planets weird oddities

Astronomers also learned that Uranus had a rate of rotation that is seventeen hours and fourteen minutes as well as a temperature at its equatorial region that was paradoxically a lot like the temperature at both of the planet’s poles.  

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By NASA

<p><span>However, when the images taken by Voyager were compared to the images taken of its neighbor Neptune, researchers couldn’t help but be perplexed by the mystery of its hue. Neptune was just the more visually appealing planet. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA/JPL</p>

Uranus wasn’t as beautiful as its cosmic neighbor

However, when the images taken by Voyager were compared to the images taken of its neighbor Neptune, researchers couldn’t help but be perplexed by the mystery of its hue. Neptune was just the more visually appealing planet. 

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL

<p><span>Uranus and Neptune are similar in many ways according to Smithsonian Magazine. For example, both planets are similar in size and mass while they are both made of gas and ice and appear to be a very similar shade of blue. </span></p>

Uranus and Neptune are very similar planets

Uranus and Neptune are similar in many ways according to Smithsonian Magazine. For example, both planets are similar in size and mass while they are both made of gas and ice and appear to be a very similar shade of blue. 

<p><span>The reason behind both planet’s blue hue is the methane in their atmospheres and it is thought that Neptune's more vibrant color is because Neptune does not have the same amounts of methane as Uranus. </span></p>

Why does Neptune have a more vibrant color?

The reason behind both planet’s blue hue is the methane in their atmospheres and it is thought that Neptune's more vibrant color is because Neptune does not have the same amounts of methane as Uranus. 

<p><span>A study published in 2022 suggested that extra methane in Uranus' atmosphere was the likely driver behind the planet’s lighter and hazier blue color. Unfortunately, that has left the world with a dull impression of the planet. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Lam, CC BY 4.0</p>

Uranus is hazy from all the extra methane gas

A study published in 2022 suggested that extra methane in Uranus' atmosphere was the likely driver behind the planet’s lighter and hazier blue color. Unfortunately, that has left the world with a dull impression of the planet. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Lam, CC BY 4.0

<p><span>However, Uranus is much more colorful and vibrant than we previously thought, and the seventh planet from the sun is finally getting the recognition it needs. The James Webb Space Telescope has captured Uranus in all its beauty. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI</p>

New images show a different view of the planet

However, Uranus is much more colorful and vibrant than we previously thought, and the seventh planet from the sun is finally getting the recognition it needs. The James Webb Space Telescope has captured Uranus in all its beauty. 

Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

<p><span>In February 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope captured stunning images of Uranus that began changing how people perceived the planet. An April 2023 press release from NASA revealed the images that feature Uranus’ rings and shiny atmosphere. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI</p>

The image taken in February 2023

In February 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope captured stunning images of Uranus that began changing how people perceived the planet. An April 2023 press release from NASA revealed the images that feature Uranus’ rings and shiny atmosphere. 

<p><span>The September image released by NASA in December 2023 was captured by researchers by combining several longer and shorter exposures of Uranus to reveal what the blue planet looks like when it's surrounded by its many rings and moons. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI</p>

The September 2023 image is absolutely stunning

The September image released by NASA in December 2023 was captured by researchers by combining several longer and shorter exposures of Uranus to reveal what the blue planet looks like when it's surrounded by its many rings and moons. 

<p><span>“How amazing it is to see Uranus in the kind of detail that has only previously been possible by Voyager 2 actually visiting it,” explained University of Nottingham astronomer Michael Merrifield to the New Scientists’ Alex Wilkins. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI</p>

Uranus in detail for the first time since Voyager

“How amazing it is to see Uranus in the kind of detail that has only previously been possible by Voyager 2 actually visiting it,” explained University of Nottingham astronomer Michael Merrifield to the New Scientists’ Alex Wilkins. 

<p><span>“Unlike Voyager’s flyby, we will be able to monitor its appearance over time to see what effect its strange tipped-over rotation might have on its weather patterns,” Merrifield also added, and more data on the planet is currently underway. </span></p>

Astronomers will continue to monitor the planet

“Unlike Voyager’s flyby, we will be able to monitor its appearance over time to see what effect its strange tipped-over rotation might have on its weather patterns,” Merrifield also added, and more data on the planet is currently underway. 

<p><span>Unfortunately, the two outer rings of Uranus were not captured in the most recent shot of the planet by Smithsonian Magazine noted that researchers were hoping to capture the last rings of the planet in its follow-up imaging of Uranus. However, many of Uranus' mon were captured. </span></p> <p>Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI</p>

We’re still missing the two outer rings

Unfortunately, the two outer rings of Uranus were not captured in the most recent shot of the planet by Smithsonian Magazine noted that researchers were hoping to capture the last rings of the planet in its follow-up imaging of Uranus. However, many of Uranus' mon were captured. 

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Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months.

voyager 2 uranus video

By Orlando Mayorquin

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that — and much more.

Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “ pale blue dot, ” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space.

Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1 , the farthest man-made object in space, hasn’t sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission’s project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the “most serious issue” the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010.

The spacecraft encountered a glitch in one of its computers that has eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data back to Earth.

The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific breakthroughs and signal the beginning of the end for a mission that has given shape to humanity’s most distant ambition and inspired generations to look to the skies.

“Scientifically, it’s a big loss,” Ms. Dodd said. “I think — emotionally — it’s maybe even a bigger loss.”

Voyager 1 is one half of the Voyager mission. It has a twin spacecraft, Voyager 2.

Launched in 1977, they were primarily built for a four-year trip to Jupiter and Saturn , expanding on earlier flybys by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.

The Voyager mission capitalized on a rare alignment of the outer planets — once every 175 years — allowing the probes to visit all four.

Using the gravity of each planet, the Voyager spacecraft could swing onto the next, according to NASA .

The mission to Jupiter and Saturn was a success.

The 1980s flybys yielded several new discoveries, including new insights about the so-called great red spot on Jupiter, the rings around Saturn and the many moons of each planet.

Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptune , becoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore all four outer planets.

voyager 2 uranus video

Voyager 1, meanwhile, had set a course for deep space, using its camera to photograph the planets it was leaving behind along the way. Voyager 2 would later begin its own trek into deep space.

“Anybody who is interested in space is interested in the things Voyager discovered about the outer planets and their moons,” said Kate Howells, the public education specialist at the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Dr. Sagan to promote space exploration.

“But I think the pale blue dot was one of those things that was sort of more poetic and touching,” she added.

On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, darting 3.7 billion miles away from the sun toward the outer reaches of the solar system, turned around and snapped a photo of Earth that Dr. Sagan and others understood to be a humbling self-portrait of humanity.

“It’s known the world over, and it does connect humanity to the stars,” Ms. Dodd said of the mission.

She added: “I’ve had many, many many people come up to me and say: ‘Wow, I love Voyager. It’s what got me excited about space. It’s what got me thinking about our place here on Earth and what that means.’”

Ms. Howells, 35, counts herself among those people.

About 10 years ago, to celebrate the beginning of her space career, Ms. Howells spent her first paycheck from the Planetary Society to get a Voyager tattoo.

Though spacecraft “all kind of look the same,” she said, more people recognize the tattoo than she anticipated.

“I think that speaks to how famous Voyager is,” she said.

The Voyagers made their mark on popular culture , inspiring a highly intelligent “Voyager 6” in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and references on “The X Files” and “The West Wing.”

Even as more advanced probes were launched from Earth, Voyager 1 continued to reliably enrich our understanding of space.

In 2012, it became the first man-made object to exit the heliosphere, the space around the solar system directly influenced by the sun. There is a technical debate among scientists around whether Voyager 1 has actually left the solar system, but, nonetheless, it became interstellar — traversing the space between stars.

That charted a new path for heliophysics, which looks at how the sun influences the space around it. In 2018, Voyager 2 followed its twin between the stars.

Before Voyager 1, scientific data on the sun’s gases and material came only from within the heliosphere’s confines, according to Dr. Jamie Rankin, Voyager’s deputy project scientist.

“And so now we can for the first time kind of connect the inside-out view from the outside-in,” Dr. Rankin said, “That’s a big part of it,” she added. “But the other half is simply that a lot of this material can’t be measured any other way than sending a spacecraft out there.”

Voyager 1 and 2 are the only such spacecraft. Before it went offline, Voyager 1 had been studying an anomalous disturbance in the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space.

“Nothing else is getting launched to go out there,” Ms. Dodd said. “So that’s why we’re spending the time and being careful about trying to recover this spacecraft — because the science is so valuable.”

But recovery means getting under the hood of an aging spacecraft more than 15 billion miles away, equipped with the technology of yesteryear. It takes 45 hours to exchange information with the craft.

It has been repeated over the years that a smartphone has hundreds of thousands of times Voyager 1’s memory — and that the radio transmitter emits as many watts as a refrigerator lightbulb.

“There was one analogy given that is it’s like trying to figure out where your cursor is on your laptop screen when your laptop screen doesn’t work,” Ms. Dodd said.

Her team is still holding out hope, she said, especially as the tantalizing 50th launch anniversary in 2027 approaches. Voyager 1 has survived glitches before, though none as serious.

Voyager 2 is still operational, but aging. It has faced its own technical difficulties too.

NASA had already estimated that the nuclear-powered generators of both spacecrafts would likely die around 2025.

Even if the Voyager interstellar mission is near its end, the voyage still has far to go.

Voyager 1 and its twin, each 40,000 years away from the next closest star, will arguably remain on an indefinite mission.

“If Voyager should sometime in its distant future encounter beings from some other civilization in space, it bears a message,” Dr. Sagan said in a 1980 interview .

Each spacecraft carries a gold-plated phonograph record loaded with an array of sound recordings and images representing humanity’s richness, its diverse cultures and life on Earth.

“A gift across the cosmic ocean from one island of civilization to another,” Dr. Sagan said.

Orlando Mayorquin is a general assignment and breaking news reporter based in New York. More about Orlando Mayorquin

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45 years ago: voyager 2 begins its epic journey to the outer planets and beyond, johnson space center.

Forty-five years ago, the Voyager 2 spacecraft left Earth to begin an epic journey that continues to this day. The first of a pair of spacecraft, Voyager 2 lifted off on Aug. 20, 1977. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, manages the spacecraft on their missions to explore the outer planets and beyond. Taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment to use the gravity of one planet to redirect the spacecraft to the next, the Voyagers initially targeted only Jupiter and Saturn, but Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune as well. The Voyagers carried sophisticated instruments to conduct their in-depth explorations of the outer planets. Both spacecraft continue to return data as they make their way out of our solar system and enter interstellar space.

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In the 1960s, mission designers at JPL noted that the next alignment of the outer planets that occurs only every 175 years would happen in the late 1970s. Technology had advanced sufficiently that spacecraft could take advantage of this rare alignment to flyby Jupiter and use its gravity to bend their trajectories to visit Saturn, and repeat the process to also visit Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Launching several missions to visit each planet individually would take much longer and cost much more. The original plan to send two pairs of Thermoelectric Outer Planet Spacecraft on these Grand Tours proved too costly leading to its cancellation in 1971. The next year, NASA approved a scaled-down version of the project to launch a pair of Mariner-class spacecraft in 1977 to explore just Jupiter and Saturn. On March 7, 1977, NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher announced the renaming of these Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 spacecraft as Voyager 1 and 2. Scientists held out hope that one of them could ultimately visit Uranus and Neptune, thereby fulfilling most of the original Grand Tour’s objectives – Pluto would have to wait many more years for its first visit.

voyager_2_mjs_77_artwork_1975

Each Voyager carried a suite of 11 instruments to study the planets during each encounter and to learn more about interplanetary space in the outer reaches of the solar system, including: 

  • An imaging science system consisting of narrow-angle and wide-angle cameras to photograph the planet and its satellites.
  • A radio science system to determine the planet’s physical properties.
  • An infrared interferometer spectrometer to investigate local and global energy balance and atmospheric composition.
  • An ultraviolet spectrometer to measure atmospheric properties.
  • A magnetometer to analyze the planet’s magnetic field and interaction with the solar wind.
  • A plasma spectrometer to investigate microscopic properties of plasma ions.
  • A low energy charged particle device to measure fluxes and distributions of ions.
  • A cosmic ray detection system to determine the origin and behavior of cosmic radiation.
  • A planetary radio astronomy investigation to study radio emissions from Jupiter.
  • A photopolarimeter to measure the planet’s surface composition.
  • A plasma wave system to study the planet’s magnetosphere.

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Voyager 2 left Earth first, lifting off on Aug. 20, 1977, atop a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida. Although its twin launched two weeks later, it traveled on a faster trajectory and arrived at Jupiter four months earlier. Voyager 2 successfully crossed the asteroid belt between Dec. 10, 1977, and Oct. 21, 1978. In April 1978, its primary radio receiver failed, and it has been operating on its backup receiver ever since.

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Voyager 2 conducted its observations of Jupiter between April 24 and Aug. 5, 1979, making its closest approach of 350,000 miles above the planet’s cloud tops on July 9. The spacecraft returned 17,000 images of Jupiter, many of its satellites, and confirmed Voyager 1’s discovery of a thin ring encircling the planet. Its other instruments returned information about Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetic field. Jupiter’s massive gravity field bent the spacecraft’s trajectory, accelerating it toward Saturn. Voyager 2 began its long-range observations of the ringed planet on June 5, 1981, passed within 26,000 miles of the planet’s cloud tops on Aug. 26, and concluded its studies on Sept. 4. The spacecraft captured 16,000 photographs of the planet, its rings, and many of its known satellites. It discovered several new ones, while its instruments returned data about Saturn’s atmosphere. Saturn’s gravity sent Voyager 2 on to Uranus.

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Voyager 2 carried out the first close-up observations of Uranus between Nov. 4, 1985, and Feb. 25, 1986, making its closest approach of 50,700 miles above the planet’s cloud tops on Jan. 24. It returned more than 7,000 photographs of the planet, its rings and moons, discovering two new rings and 11 new moons. The spacecraft’s instruments returned data about the planet’s atmosphere and its unusual magnetic field, tilted by 59 degrees compared to its rotational axis and offset from the planet’s center by about one-third of the planet’s radius. Voyager 2 took advantage of Uranus’ gravity to send it on to its last planetary destination, Neptune. The spacecraft conducted the first close-up observations of the eighth planet between June 5 and Oct. 2, 1989, making its flyby just 3,408 miles above its north pole on Aug. 25, its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth in 1977. This trajectory allowed Voyager 2 to observe Neptune’s large moon Triton, the last solid object it explored. During the encounter, it returned more than 9,000 images of the planet, its atmosphere, dark rings, and moons, discovering six new moons. Like Uranus, Voyager 2’s instruments revealed that Neptune has an unusual magnetic field, not only tilted 47 degrees from the planet’s axis but also significantly offset from the planet’s center.

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Following its reconnaissance of Neptune, Voyager 2 began its Interstellar Mission extension that continues to this day. Over the years, several of the spacecraft’s instruments have been turned off to conserve power, beginning with the imaging system in 1998, but it continues to return data about cosmic rays and the solar wind. On Nov. 5, 2018, six years after its twin, Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause, the boundary between the heliosphere – the bubble-like region of space created by the Sun – and the interstellar medium. Currently, Voyager 2 continues its mission, more than 12 billion miles from Earth, so distant that a signal from the spacecraft takes 18 hours to reach Earth, and just as long for a return signal to reach the craft. Engineers expect that Voyager 2 will continue to return data until about 2025. And just in case an alien intelligence finds it one day, Voyager 2 like its twin carries a gold-plated record that contains information about its home planet, including recordings of terrestrial sounds, music, and greetings in 55 languages. Engineers at NASA thoughtfully included Instructions on how to play the record.

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For more on Voyagers 1 and 2, NASA’s longest-lived missions, please visit here , with thanks to our colleagues at JPL.

The voyage continues…

What happened to the extra copies of the Voyager mission's golden records

  • Elon Musk posted on X that he has a Voyager golden record. 
  • That got me thinking, so I called NASA to find where the original copies went.
  • Two golden records went to space on the twin Voyager spacecraft. 10 others are left on Earth.

Insider Today

NASA sent two golden records off to space in 1977 to teach aliens about Earth — and Elon Musk is apparently a fan.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO commented on a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday that included an image of a golden record.

"I have one," Musk said in the post.

Musk wasn't clear on whether he had an original or a copy, and he didn't respond to a request for comment.

But his post had me wondering: Who has the original golden records?

Tracking down the golden records

NASA launched two golden records into space on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977 as a way to teach other civilizations about life on Earth if they ever came across the probes.

The twin spacecraft were launched over 40 years ago to explore the outer solar system.

The golden records attached to the exterior of the spacecrafts, with visual instructions on how to play 115 images, spoken greetings in 55 languages, and variation of sounds from Earth, including a 90-minute music playlist, according to a post on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The 12-inch gold-plated copper disks also include a message from President Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Waldheim, according to NASA.

When I started looking into the golden records, I noticed conflicting numbers for how many originals were created. Some news articles cited 10 golden records, others said there were eight total.

But according to an archivist at JPL, there were 12 original records: two of them went to space and 10 were given to institutions or people on Earth.

Here are the institutions and people who got a copy, according to the JPL archivist:

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Johnson Space Center

Kennedy Space Center

Glenn Research Center

Langley Research Center

Goddard Space Flight Center

National Air & Space Museum at the Smithsonian

The Library of Congress

The President

The United Nations

But only eight of the 10 on Earth are currently accounted for. According to the archivist, the copies that went to Langley Research Center and President Carter couldn't be located a few years ago.

While Musk probably doesn't have an original golden record, he could have a copy. There was a successful Kickstarter to fund a box set of the record and they're now sold online starting at $88.

But the original materials are for sale — and Jon Lomberg, the design director of the golden record, has all of the original images and other archival material from the golden record.

He told BI he'd be happy to sell it to Musk.

"There's a way that you can feel, I think, a personal attachment to that project by knowing that this was the actual slide that the people that made the record used and looked at and argued over and decided to scan and send into space and it," Lomberg said.

A personal copy of the master audio recording owned by the late Carl Sagan, the lead scientist of the project, went to auction at Sotheby's in July 2023, but didn't hit its reserve and wasn't sold.

And it should be noted: not even Sagan himself got a copy of the original record.

Voyager 1 and 2's ongoing mission

Since launching, the spacecraft discovered volcanoes on Jupiter's moon , identified the intricacies of Saturn's rings, and took the first close-up photographs of Uranus and Neptune.

NASA has since extended the mission and has kept in communication with the probes as they enter interstellar space.

Their current mission is to explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain.

Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles from Earth, and Voyager 2 is a little over 12.5 billion miles away, according to tracking information from JPL.

Since December, Voyager 1 has had issues with its flight data system, keeping Earth from receiving any data. JPL spokesperson Calla Cofield told BI that NASA doesn't have any updates on Voyager 1.

"The team continues information gathering and are preparing some steps that they're hopeful will get them on a path to either understanding the root of the problem and/or solving it," Cofield said.

Voyager 2 is operating normally after brief communication issues last year, according to a NASA update posted in August.

While the golden records on the Voyager spacecraft are expected to last over a billion years, Lomberg said the probes will probably crash on another planet or star eventually.

Lomberg said that, in some sense, the golden records sent to space are dated by now: they don't have any information on personal computers or rap music.

But he said the message is still timeless.

"The fundamental things that we show, the mountains and the rivers and the oceans and parents and children and the beauty of sport," Lomberg said. "There's some things that never age."

Watch: 40 years ago, NASA sent a message to aliens — here's what it says

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Watch this Space: Voyager 1 goes ‘senile’ and the interstellar object lie

Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object in space, has been sending back nonsensical data since november, raising concerns about its functionality. this potential loss is more sentimental than scientific, as voyager 1 has already made groundbreaking discoveries..

voyager 2 uranus video

NASA’s Voyager 1 has been travelling in space for nearly 50 years and in that time, it became the first spacecraft to go into interstellar space and continues to be the man-made object farthest from the Earth. But since last November, it has been sending back nothing but “incoherent” data back to mission controllers, raising serious concerns about whether its time has ended.

Voyager 1’s demise would not be as much of a scientific loss as it would be an emotional one. For the scientific community, what is happening right now is the equivalent of watching a really old relative go senile. The spacecraft seems to have already lost its bearings and what it says does not make much sense.

voyager 2 uranus video

“It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner,” said Suzanne Dodd of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to NPR. Dodd has been the project manager for the Voyager interstellar mission since 2010.

A Voyager update: Engineers are still working to resolve a data issue on Voyager 1. We can talk to the spacecraft, and it can hear us, but it's a slow process given the spacecraft's incredible distance from Earth. We’ll keep you informed on its status. 🤞 pic.twitter.com/qSxG0au1Nn — NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) February 6, 2024

Apart from being the first spacecraft to venture beyond the protective heliosphere of our Sun, it also helped make many important discoveries, including a thin ring around Jupiter, two new Jovian moons, five new Saturnian moons and a new ring for the planet called the G-ring.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in the year 1977 to take advantage of a rare geometric alignment of the outer planets which allowed NASA to take a four-planet tour in a relatively short period of time with minimal fuel use. The layout of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune last seen in the 1970s and the 1980s lets a spacecraft on a special flight path swing from one planet to another without large onboard propulsion systems. The layout only happens about once in 175 years.

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Rather counterintuitively, Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, before Voyager 1 launched on September 5, 1977. But the latter was put on a faster and shorter trajectory. This meant that Voyager 1 reached Jupiter on March 5, 1979 and Saturn on November 12, 1980, while Voyager 2 accomplished the same feat on July 9, 1979 and August 25, 1981, respectively.

For the initially planned two-planet mission, the spacecrafts were built to last five years but with its successful achievement of its objectives and as the mission went on, NASA engineers realised that it would also be possible to do flybys of the two outermost giant planets Uranus and Neptune.

NASA claims that even if the Voyager mission had ended after Jupiter and Saturn, it would still have been enough material to “rewrite” astronomy textbooks. But the information they have returned over the past 45 years has revolutionised planetary astronomy and our understanding of the solar system.

Now, enough about things that we have sent into interstellar space, what about things that have come to Earth from there?

In 2014, a meteor also known as Interstellar meteor 1, crashed into the Earth in the Pacific Ocean. A 2019 preprint paper by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb and astronomer Amir Siraj claimed that it was an interstellar object. Other astronomers already doubted this claim but in 2023, Loeb was part of an expedition in the part of the ocean where the meteor was believed to have fallen and claimed he discovered “materials of interstellar origin.”

I'm currently more than 20.4 billion kilometers (12.6 billion miles) away from Earth. But on this day in 1986, I was doing my closest flyby of Uranus. I came within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of its cloud tops! -V2 pic.twitter.com/v6bMws70BY — NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) January 24, 2024

The location was derived from ground vibrations detected at the time at a seismic station in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Now, a new research study led by Johns Hopkins University found that those vibrations were actually caused by a truck driving through the highway.

The research paper also concludes that the material found by Loeb and his colleagues were actually probably either bits of tiny run-of-the-mill meteorites or formed by the impact of meteorites on Earth’s surface. So we do not really have anything from interstellar space, even though it has something of ours. Two things actually — Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

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Oscars 2024 Live: The 96th Academy Awards full winners list

The 96th Academy Awards ceremony, set to take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, is highly anticipated with a star-studded lineup. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer leads with 13 nominations. India too has something to look forward to as the documentary To Kill a Tiger, directed by India-born Canadian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja, has received a nod in the Documentary Feature Film category.

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IMAGES

  1. WATCH LIVE: Get up close and personal with Uranus as it gets its

    voyager 2 uranus video

  2. Uranus and its rings. Captured by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986 : spaceporn

    voyager 2 uranus video

  3. Artwork Showing Voyager 2's Encounter With Uranus Photograph by Julian

    voyager 2 uranus video

  4. Uranus from Voyager 2

    voyager 2 uranus video

  5. Uranus

    voyager 2 uranus video

  6. Voyager_2_Uranus_artist_s_concept_credit_Nasa_JPL

    voyager 2 uranus video

VIDEO

  1. VOYAGER 2 Uranus

  2. Space Missions

  3. Planet Uranus Voyager 2 Flyby

  4. Uranus Unveiled: Key Facts About Uranus #shorts #uranus

  5. Voyager Spacecraft: Humanity's Farthest Journey

  6. Oberon

COMMENTS

  1. Voyager 2 Flyby of Uranus (1986) Official NASA animations

    The full version of an animation showing Voyager 2's encounter with Uranus in 1986. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech & Jim Blinn.

  2. Voyager

    NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, in January. At its closet, the spacecraft came within 81,800 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranus's cloudtops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings ...

  3. Voyager

    Uranus Approach. NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, in January 1986. At its closest, the spacecraft came within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranus's cloudtops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet ...

  4. 35 Years Ago: Voyager 2 Explores Uranus

    Voyager 2 began to observe Uranus on November 4, 1985, by creating a series of time-lapse videos of the planet and its surroundings. Due to Uranus' axial tilt of nearly 98 degrees to its orbital plane (the planet is basically lying on its side), Voyager 2's encounter resembled aiming at a bull's eye, with the planet at the center and its ...

  5. Voyager 2

    As presented by Al Higgs with LIVE feed from NASA.

  6. Voyager 2

    Images sourced from OPUS3, thanks to SETI and NASA: https://opus.pds-rings.seti.org/opus/#search I searched and sorted through the Voyager 2 ISS data. Then, ...

  7. Voyager 2's Discoveries On Neptune and Uranus [4K]

    Within our solar system, there are a number of planets that are way more difficult to explore due to reasons like extreme temperatures (Mercury & Venus), and...

  8. VOYAGER 2 Uranus

    Reconstructed real-time coverage of Voyager 2 encounter with Uranus.Science Report Part I Voyager 2 Encounter with the Planet UranusIncludes parts of an orig...

  9. 35 Years Ago: Voyager 2 Explores Uranus

    Voyager 2 began to observe Uranus on November 4, 1985, by creating a series of time-lapse videos of the planet and its surroundings. Due to Uranus' axial tilt of nearly 98 degrees to its orbital plane (the planet is basically lying on its side), Voyager 2's encounter resembled aiming at a bull's eye, with the planet at the center and its moons and rings orbiting around it.

  10. 27 Years Ago: Voyager 2's Visit to Uranus

    See images from Voyager 2's visit of Uranus here, and check out a video of the August 20, 1977 launch below along with more images from the historic Voyager mission's "Grand Tour" of the ...

  11. Fifteenth Anniversary of Voyager 2 Flyby of Uranus in 1986

    The first unmanned space probe flyby in history of the planet Uranus by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986 should have been an exciting one in the history of planetary exploration: Uranus was the first planet discovered by humans not thousands of years before written history and civilization, but in relatively moderns times - on March 13, 1781 by ...

  12. Voyager 2

    Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to study all four of the solar system's giant planets at close range. Voyager 2 discovered a 14th moon at Jupiter. Voyager 2 was the first human-made object to fly past Uranus. At Uranus, Voyager 2 discovered 10 new moons and two new rings. Voyager 2 was the first human-made object to fly by Neptune.

  13. Voyager 2

    Plots 2 to 4 are third-angle projections at 20% scale. In the SVG file, hover over a trajectory or orbit to highlight it and its associated launches and flybys. Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere.

  14. Revisiting Decades-Old Voyager 2 Data, Scientists Find One More ...

    Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret. Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus's atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about ...

  15. Voyager 2

    The Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been in operation since 1977 and is the only spacecraft to have ever visited Uranus and Neptune, has made its way to interstellar space, where its twin spacecraft, Voyager 1, has resided since August 2012. During its travels through the outer solar system, Voyager 2 visited all four gas giant planets, and ...

  16. Voyager

    The Voyager 1 and 2 Saturn encounters occurred nine months apart, in November 1980 and August 1981. Voyager 1 is leaving the solar system. Voyager 2 completed its encounter with Uranus in January 1986 and with Neptune in August 1989, and is now also en route out of the solar system.

  17. Uranus as seen by NASA's Voyager 2

    Uranus as seen by NASA's Voyager 2. Dec. 18, 1986. This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. The Voyager project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Download JPG.

  18. Voyager 2 Image of Uranus

    NASA. Jul 13, 2015. Image Article. This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2. This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2. NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, in January 1986.

  19. Voyager 2: An iconic spacecraft that's still exploring 45 years on

    Additionally, Voyager 2 discovered rings around Uranus, 10 new moons and a magnetic field that, oddly, was 55 degrees off the planet's axis. Astronomers are still puzzling over Uranus' orientation ...

  20. Voyager 2: First Spacecraft at Uranus

    JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech.

  21. Voyager 2: Nasa fully back in contact with lost space probe

    Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft ever to fly by Neptune and Uranus, while Voyager 1 is now nearly 15 billion miles away from Earth, making it humanity's most distant spacecraft.

  22. When Neptune got its stunning close-up: The Voyager 2 flyby, 30 years

    Voyager 2 is still the only spacecraft to visit the outer planets of Neptune and Uranus. The Voyager probes launched in 1977. Together, they visited Saturn and Jupiter and their moons.

  23. New images of Uranus are changing what we thought we knew about ...

    NASA has noted that ten new moons were discovered when Voyager stopped in at 50,600 miles or 81,600 kilometers from the planet, and we also found Uranus had 2 more rings than we had previously ...

  24. Three new moons discovered orbiting Uranus and Neptune

    NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft captured these views of Uranus (left) and Neptune (right) during its flybys of the planets in the 1980s.

  25. Voyager 2: First Spacecraft at Uranus

    Excerpt on Uranus from "The Grand Tour." For more about the Voyager mission, please visit https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

  26. Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

    Video. A time-lapse video from NASA captures Voyager 1's approach to Jupiter. ... Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptune, becoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore all four outer planets.

  27. 45 Years Ago: Voyager 2 Begins its Epic Journey to the Outer ...

    Saturn's gravity sent Voyager 2 on to Uranus. Left: Voyager 2 image of Uranus. Right: Voyager 2 image of Neptune. Voyager 2 carried out the first close-up observations of Uranus between Nov. 4, 1985, and Feb. 25, 1986, making its closest approach of 50,700 miles above the planet's cloud tops on Jan. 24. It returned more than 7,000 ...

  28. What happened to the extra copies of the Voyager mission's golden records

    Video Big Business; Food Wars; So Expensive ... and took the first close-up photographs of Uranus and ... Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles from Earth, and Voyager 2 is a little over 12.5 ...

  29. Watch this Space: Voyager 1 goes 'senile' and the interstellar object

    Rather counterintuitively, Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, before Voyager 1 launched on September 5, 1977. But the latter was put on a faster and shorter trajectory. This meant that Voyager 1 reached Jupiter on March 5, 1979 and Saturn on November 12, 1980, while Voyager 2 accomplished the same feat on July 9, 1979 and August 25, 1981 ...