{"id":599286,"date":"2026-08-20T15:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599286\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T15:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T15:38:10","slug":"on-this-day-in-space-aug-20-1977-voyager-2-launches-to-the-outer-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599286\/","title":{"rendered":"On this day in space! Aug. 20, 1977: Voyager 2 launches to the outer planets"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Aug. 20, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft on a mission to explore the outer planets. Despite its name, this was the first of the two Voyager missions<\/a> NASA launched that year.<\/p>\n

Voyager 2: Sailing Among Giant Planets<\/a><\/p>\n

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Thanks to a rare alignment of the planets, NASA had the opportunity to send a spacecraft on an unprecedented journey to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.While Voyager 1<\/a> ended its planetary mission after Saturn, Voyager 2 completed a 12-year journey to Neptune<\/a>. But they didn’t stop there!<\/p>\n

Voyager 1 left the solar system<\/a> and entered interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 followed suit<\/a> in 2018. As it approaches 50 years of operation, the probe continues to return data from three functioning science instruments.<\/p>\n

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\"NASA's\n<\/p>\n

NASA’s Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977. (Image credit: NASA)Why it mattered<\/p>\n

Nearly half a century later, it remains the only spacecraft to visit all four has giants in our solar system, and the only spacecraft humanity has ever sent past Uranus and Neptune. Some of Voyager 2\u2019s biggest surprises came from the moons orbiting those planets. Its images of Neptune\u2019s largest moon, Triton, revealed active geyser-like plumes blasting nitrogen miles above the surface \u2014 making it one of only three geologically active moons in the solar system (maybe four, depending on what Europa Clipper finds).<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Decades beyond its original mission, Voyager 2 has begun studying the Kuiper Belt environment beyond the Sun\u2019s protective heliosphere, giving scientists measurements from a region no spacecraft had been designed to reach. Voyager 2’s plutonium power supply drops in efficiency about four watts per year, and NASA engineers were recently able to reduce how much power Voyager 2 needs<\/a> by switching off a number of non-science components to adapt a less demanding method of warming the spacecraft while it continues traveling ever farther away from the sun.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Aug. 20, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft on a mission to explore the outer planets.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-599286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}