TerravelerAn atlas of geo-history, written in tandem
The log

Voyager 2: The Grand Tour of the Giant Planets (1977– )

Voyager 2 · Voyager 2 (NASA/JPL space probe)

Launched 20 August 1977 on a Titan IIIE-Centaur, Voyager 2 used gravity assists at Jupiter (July 1979) and Saturn (August 1981) to bend its path on to Uranus (January 1986) and Neptune (August 1989) — the only spacecraft ever to visit either ice giant. It returned the first, and so far only, close-up images of their rings, atmospheres and moon systems, discovering new moons and rings at each stop. It continued outward past Neptune and crossed the heliopause into interstellar space on 5 November 2018. More than four and a half decades after launch, it is still operating and still transmitting.

Sail this voyage on the map

The itinerary

13 stages. Journal excerpts are verbatim from public-domain sources, each with its citation; where no verified quote exists, the entry says so rather than inventing one.

  1. 1. Earth (launch)

    Arrived 20 August 1977 · departed 20 August 1977 · Launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on a Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket. theta_deg is Earth's own J2000 mean-longitude position on the launch date (see _theta_method).

    Voyager 2 lifts off atop a Titan IIIE-Centaur, sixteen days before its twin Voyager 1, aimed at the rare once-every-176-years alignment of the four giant planets that makes a single-probe grand tour possible.

    Launch mass 825 kg, carrying eleven scientific instruments and the Golden Record — a copper phonograph disc bearing sounds, images and greetings from Earth, intended to outlast the Sun.
    NASA/JPL Photojournal, PIA01480 — "Voyager 2 Launch"

  2. 2. Cruise (Earth → Jupiter)

    Arrived 1 June 1978 · departed 1 June 1978 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au and theta_deg are linearly interpolated between the Earth and Jupiter waypoints by time fraction, added only to bend the drawn trajectory. See _theta_method. · position approximate

    Deep-space cruise phase, crossing the asteroid belt on the way to Jupiter.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  3. 3. Jupiter

    Arrived 9 July 1979 · departed 9 July 1979 · Closest approach 9 July 1979, about 570,000 km above the cloud tops. theta_deg is Jupiter's own J2000 mean-longitude position on the encounter date (see _theta_method).

    Closest approach to Jupiter. Voyager 2 studies the Great Red Spot, the faint Jovian ring (discovered by Voyager 1 months earlier), and the volcanic moon Io, then uses Jupiter's gravity to bend and accelerate on toward Saturn.

    A colour composite of the Great Red Spot, taken 29 June 1979 from over 9 million km out, shows structure within the storm and a white oval drifting below it — the smallest features resolved are about 170 km across.
    NASA/JPL Photojournal, PIA01370 — "Jupiter's Great Red Spot"

  4. 4. Cruise (Jupiter → Saturn)

    Arrived 1 August 1980 · departed 1 August 1980 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au and theta_deg are linearly interpolated between the Jupiter and Saturn waypoints by time fraction, added only to bend the drawn trajectory. See _theta_method. · position approximate

    Deep-space cruise phase, outbound from Jupiter toward Saturn.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  5. 5. Saturn

    Arrived 26 August 1981 · departed 26 August 1981 · Closest approach 26 August 1981, about 101,000 km above the cloud tops. theta_deg is Saturn's own J2000 mean-longitude position on the encounter date (see _theta_method).

    Closest approach to Saturn. Voyager 2 returns high-resolution views of the rings — including the mysterious dark 'spokes' in the B-ring — and the moon system, then bends onward toward Uranus. A scan-platform stall shortly after encounter briefly interrupted imaging.

    A true-colour view acquired 21 July 1981 from about 33.9 million km shows Saturn with the moons Rhea and Dione against the rings, cloud bands already resolved in the southern hemisphere.
    NASA/JPL Photojournal, PIA00030 — "Saturn With Rhea and Dione (True Color)"

  6. 6. Cruise (Saturn → Uranus)

    Arrived 1 June 1983 · departed 1 June 1983 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au and theta_deg are linearly interpolated between the Saturn and Uranus waypoints by time fraction, added only to bend the drawn trajectory. See _theta_method. · position approximate

    Deep-space cruise phase on the long leg out to Uranus.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  7. 7. Cruise (Saturn → Uranus)

    Arrived 1 December 1984 · departed 1 December 1984 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au and theta_deg are linearly interpolated between the Saturn and Uranus waypoints by time fraction, added only to bend the drawn trajectory. See _theta_method. · position approximate

    Deep-space cruise phase, still inbound toward Uranus.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  8. 8. Uranus

    Arrived 24 January 1986 · departed 24 January 1986 · Closest approach 24 January 1986, about 81,500 km above the cloud tops. theta_deg is Uranus's own J2000 mean-longitude position on the encounter date (see _theta_method).

    Closest approach to Uranus — the only spacecraft ever to visit it. Voyager 2 discovers ten new moons and two new rings, and finds a magnetic field tilted almost 60 degrees from the planet's spin axis. Uranus itself, tipped on its side, shows an almost featureless pale blue-green disc.

    Narrow-angle camera frames from the January 1986 encounter, combined into true- and false-colour views, show a hazy, nearly blank disc — far less atmospheric structure than Jupiter or Saturn had shown.
    NASA/JPL Photojournal, PIA18182 — "Uranus as seen by NASA's Voyager 2"

  9. 9. Cruise (Uranus → Neptune)

    Arrived 1 December 1987 · departed 1 December 1987 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au and theta_deg are linearly interpolated between the Uranus and Neptune waypoints by time fraction, added only to bend the drawn trajectory. See _theta_method. · position approximate

    Deep-space cruise phase, outbound from Uranus toward the final planetary encounter at Neptune.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  10. 10. Neptune

    Arrived 25 August 1989 · departed 25 August 1989 · Closest approach 25 August 1989, about 4,950 km above the cloud tops — the closest of any planetary flyby in the mission. theta_deg is Neptune's own J2000 mean-longitude position on the encounter date (see _theta_method).

    Closest approach to Neptune, the last of the four giant planets and the last planetary encounter of the primary mission. Voyager 2 finds the Great Dark Spot, supersonic winds, six new moons, faint rings, and flies close past the moon Triton before heading out of the plane of the planets toward interstellar space.

    A contrast-enhanced colour view from 14 August 1989, 14.8 million km out, shows bright wispy clouds overlying the Great Dark Spot's southern and northwestern margins.
    NASA/JPL Photojournal, PIA02210 — "Neptune"

  11. 11. Cruise (Neptune → interstellar space)

    Arrived 1 January 2000 · departed 1 January 2000 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au is linearly interpolated between the Neptune and Heliopause waypoints by time fraction; theta_deg holds Neptune's encounter angle (see _theta_method — Voyager 2's post-Neptune path is ballistic and nearly radial, so angular drift is small). · position approximate

    Extended mission: the Voyager Interstellar Mission. Instruments keep sampling the outer heliosphere as the probe climbs toward the edge of the Sun's influence.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  12. 12. Cruise (Neptune → interstellar space)

    Arrived 1 January 2010 · departed 1 January 2010 · Not a NASA-published data point: r_au is linearly interpolated between the Neptune and Heliopause waypoints by time fraction; theta_deg holds Neptune's encounter angle (see _theta_method). · position approximate

    Still climbing outward through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer boundary region where the solar wind slows as it presses against the interstellar medium.

    No verified journal excerpt for this stage yet — help us find one.

  13. 13. Heliopause (interstellar boundary)

    Arrived 5 November 2018 · departed 5 November 2018 · Crossing date and ~119 AU distance are NASA-published mission facts. theta_deg is an approximation, not computed: it holds Neptune's encounter angle since the post-Neptune trajectory is ballistic and nearly radial (see _theta_method) — flagged rather than guessed. · position approximate

    Voyager 2 crosses the heliopause, the boundary where the Sun's solar wind gives way to the interstellar medium, becoming the second human-made object (after Voyager 1 in 2012) to reach interstellar space. Instruments recorded a steep drop in solar-originating particles and a rise in galactic cosmic rays at the crossing.

    At the moment of crossing, Voyager 2 was about 18 billion km (11 billion miles) from Earth — over 119 AU — with a one-way radio signal taking more than 16.5 hours to arrive.
    NASA, "NASA's Voyager 2 Probe Enters Interstellar Space" (10 Dec 2018); NASA/JPL Photojournal PIA22835 — "Two Interstellar Travelers"

Published under CC BY-SA 4.0. Sources keep their own open licences. See the Magna Carta of the Seas for how this was verified.