Voyager 2

Mission

Kind: Planetary exploration

State: Successful

Place: Jupiter

Operator: NASA / JPL

Date

Start:

Duration: 43 years, 56 minutes elapsed Planetary mission: 12 years, 1 month, 12 days Interstellar mission: 30 years, 10 months, 18 days elapsed

Mission Ending

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." - Jim Henson

Rocket

Rocket: Titan IIIE

Kind: NASA / JPL

Manufacturer: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Mass: 825.5 kilograms (1,820 lb)

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral LC-41

Flyby

1º Flyby: Jupiter

2º Flyby: Saturn

3º Flyby: Uranus

4º Flyby: Neptune

Orbit

"You’re going very fast when you’re on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half." - Robert Crippen

Lander

"The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing." - Paul Theroux

Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. Part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune. It is the only spacecraft to have visited either of these two ice giant planets. Voyager 2 is the fourth of five spacecraft to achieve the Solar escape velocity, which will allow it to leave the Solar System. Its primary mission ended with the exploration of the Neptunian system on October 2, 1989, after having visited the Uranian system in 1986, the Saturnian system in 1981, and the Jovian system in 1979. Voyager 2 is now in its extended mission to study Interstellar Space and has been operating for 43 years as of August 20, 2020. It remains in contact through the NASA Deep Space Network. On November 5, 2018, at a distance of 122 AU (1.83×1010 km) (about 16:58 light-hours) from the Sun, moving at a velocity of 15.341 km/s (55,230 km/h) relative to the Sun, Voyager 2 left the heliosphere, and entered the interstellar medium (ISM), a region of outer space beyond the influence of the Solar System, joining Voyager 1 which had reached the interstellar medium in 2012. Voyager 2 has begun to provide the first direct measurements of the density and temperature of the interstellar plasma.