The long road of the Voyagers

Two launches, one summer

Voyager 2 left Cape Canaveral first, on 20 August 1977. Voyager 1 followed on 5 September 1977 on a faster path, which is why it carries the lower number but reached its targets first.

Four giant planets

Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter on 9 July 1979, Saturn in August 1981, Uranus on 24 January 1986 and Neptune on 25 August 1989. It is still the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. Almost everything we have seen up close of those two planets comes from a few days of flybys in the 1980s.

Into interstellar space

After the planets, both spacecraft kept going. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in August 2012, and Voyager 2 on 5 November 2018: both left the heliosphere, the bubble of particles and magnetic field blown out by the Sun.

The Voyagers carry the Golden Record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc with sounds and images of Earth, meant for anyone who might find it.

How we still hear them

Contact with the Voyagers runs through the Deep Space Network, which tracks NASA spacecraft far beyond the Moon.