Launched in 1977, NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft are the agency’s longest-operating and farthest-flung probes. Voyager 1 visited Jupiter and Saturn, revealing new features of both planets and their moons. Voyager 2 followed its twin to Jupiter and Saturn before changing its trajectory to fly by Uranus and Neptune. It remains the only spacecraft to visit our solar system’s two ice giant planets.
Continuing their legacy as science pioneers, the Voyagers are the only two probes to journey into interstellar space – the space between stars. This region lies outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields emitted by our Sun. By directly sampling the interstellar environment, the Voyagers are providing data that spacecraft closer to Earth can’t replicate. This helps scientists study both the shape of the heliosphere and its interaction with the ocean of interstellar material that the Sun is traveling through.
Readers of this blog can find occasional updates on mission science, the health of the spacecraft, and the creative solutions engineers have needed to come up with in order to keep the venerable spacecraft operating after nearly 50 years.
For more about Voyager, go to www.nasa.gov/voyager and follow along on X (formerly Twitter) at @NASAVoyager. Take Voyager’s Grand Tour with NASA’s Eyes.
News Media ContactCalla CofieldJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.626-808-2469calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov