08/20/2026
Happy launchiversary to Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune and Uranus!
➡️ ☀️: The Voyager program consists of two twin spacecraft: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Voyager 2 was actually launched first, on August 20, 1977, but Voyager 1 was sent on a faster trajectory when it launched about two weeks later. They are the only two functioning spacecraft currently in interstellar space, beyond the environment controlled by the Sun.
👽: Each Voyager spacecraft carries a golden phonograph record affixed to its side, intended as a time capsule from Earth to any extraterrestrial life that might find the probes sometime in the distant future. It is inscribed with a message from Jimmy Carter, the U.S. President at the time of launch, which reads: “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.”
1️⃣: An artist’s concept of Voyager 2 in the solar wind.
NASA / GSFC Conceptual Image Lab
2️⃣: The images for this composite were taken over a period of 4 hours on 8 July 1979 through orange, green, and blue or violet filters. Because of the long time span and Jupiter’s rapid (10-hour) rotation, the cloud positions don’t represent any real instantaneous view of Jupiter. Ganymede’s shadow falls on the disk of Jupiter. Ganymede was actually much farther from Jupiter as seen by Voyager 2 during this observation; the distance between the two worlds has been reduced for aesthetic expediency. Voyager 2 was about 1.5 million kilometers away from Jupiter during this observation, but only 430,000 kilometers from Ganymede, which is why Ganymede appears so much larger than its shadow.
NASA / JPL / Ian Regan
3️⃣/4️⃣: Uranus (left) in 1986 and Neptune (right) in 1989. These Voyager 2 portraits are newly reprocessed to show the two planets at correct relative size and color.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Björn Jónsson
Learn more about the Voyager missions: https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/voyager
