NASA timed Voyager 2’s 1977 launch to catch an alignment of the four outer planets that only lines up once every 176 years, letting a single spacecraft slingshot past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune on borrowed gravity — a shortcut through the solar system that will not repeat until the 2150s
Voyager 2 left Cape Canaveral at 14:29:44 UTC on 20 August 1977. Its Titan IIIE-Centaur rocket supplied the…
