The spacecraft would be designed with redundant systems to ensure survival throughout the entire tour. NASA began work on a Grand Tour, which evolved into a massive project involving two groups of two probes each, with one group visiting Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto and the other Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. In the early space age, it was realized that a periodic alignment of the outer planets would occur in the late 1970s and enable a single probe to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune by taking advantage of the then-new technique of gravity assists. History įurther information: Grand Tour program Background Communications are the responsibility of Australia's DSS 43 communication antenna, located near Canberra. Voyager 2 remains in contact with Earth through the NASA Deep Space Network. Voyager 2 has begun to provide the first direct measurements of the density and temperature of the interstellar plasma. Voyager 2 has left the Sun's heliosphere and is traveling through the interstellar medium, a region of outer space beyond the influence of the Solar System, joining Voyager 1, which had reached the interstellar medium in 2012. The probe entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018, at a distance of 119.7 AU (11.1 billion mi 17.9 billion km) from the Sun and moving at a velocity of 15.341 km/s (34,320 mph) relative to the Sun. It has been operating for 45 years, 11 months and 23 days as of AugUTC as of July 2023, it has reached a distance of 133.041 AU (19.903 billion km 12.367 billion mi) from Earth. The spacecraft is now in its extended mission of studying interstellar space. Voyager 2 successfully fulfilled its primary mission of visiting the Jovian system in 1979, the Saturnian system in 1981, Uranian system in 1986, and the Neptunian system in 1989. Voyager 2 was the third of five spacecraft to achieve Solar escape velocity, which allowed it to leave the Solar System. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice giant planets. As a part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach gas giants Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with ice giants Uranus and Neptune. 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. In the SVG file, hover over a trajectory or orbit to highlight it and its associated launches and flybys.

Plots 2 to 4 are third-angle projections at 20% scale. Plot 1 is viewed from the north ecliptic pole, to scale. Markers denote positions on 1 January of each year, with every fifth year labelled. Heliocentric positions of the five interstellar probes (squares) and other bodies (circles) until 2020, with launch and flyby dates.

Uranus nasa images