On Aug. 20, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft on a mission to explore the outer planets. Despite its name, this was the first of the two Voyager missions NASA launched that year.
Voyager 2: Sailing Among Giant Planets
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Thanks to a rare alignment of the planets, NASA had the opportunity to send a spacecraft on an unprecedented journey to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.While Voyager 1 ended its planetary mission after Saturn, Voyager 2 completed a 12-year journey to Neptune. But they didn’t stop there!
Voyager 1 left the solar system and entered interstellar space in 2012. In December 2018, NASA announced that Voyager 2 had also left the solar system.
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Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
