Voyager 2

Assembled from 128 blocks · 5 evidence · 67 related

1. Story
2. The first of the pair to launch, on 20 August 1977, and the only spacecraft ever to have visited Uranus or Neptune. Its slower trajectory kept the full four-planet option open: Jupiter on 9 July 1979, Saturn on 25 August 1981, Uranus on 24 January 1986 and Neptune on 25 August 1989, each encounter using the previous planet's gravity to reach the next. It crossed the termination shock in August 2007 and the heliopause on 5 November 2018 at 119 AU, and because its plasma science instrument still worked — unlike Voyager 1's — it produced the first direct plasma measurements of the crossing itself. As of August 2026 it is roughly 140 AU from Earth with three science instruments running. Its low-energy charged particle instrument was switched off on 24 March 2025, and a further shutdown expected before the end of 2026 was deferred by a power-saving manoeuvre executed on 9 July 2026. Not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Voyager 2
5. Gravity assist
6. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
7. Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS)
8. DSS-43, Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
9. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
10. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
11. Titan IIIE-Centaur
12. Jupiter
13. Saturn
14. Uranus
15. Neptune
16. The Grand Tour alignment
17. Connections
18. Voyager 1
19. The Grand Tour alignment
20. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
21. DSS-43, Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
22. Gravity assist
23. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
24. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
25. Jupiter
26. Neptune
27. Saturn
28. Uranus
29. Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS)
30. Titan IIIE-Centaur
31. Edward C. Stone
32. The Voyager Golden Record
33. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
34. Voyager 2 launches
35. Voyager 2 closest approach to Jupiter
36. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
37. Voyager 2 reaches Uranus — the only close encounter ever made
38. Voyager 2 passes Neptune and Triton, ending the planetary programme
39. Voyager 2 crosses the termination shock at about 84 AU
40. Voyager 2 crosses the heliopause at 119 AU
41. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
42. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
43. Voyager 1
44. Voyager 2
45. Gary Flandro
46. Gravity assist
47. Jupiter
48. Saturn
49. Uranus
50. Neptune
51. Voyager 1
52. Voyager 2
53. Plutonium-238
54. Voyager 1 launches
55. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
56. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
57. Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
58. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
59. Voyager 2
60. NASA Deep Space Network
61. Voyager 1
62. Voyager 2
63. Flandro identifies a four-planet gravity-assist opportunity
64. The Grand Tour alignment
65. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
66. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
67. Voyager 1
68. Voyager 2
69. NASA Deep Space Network
70. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
71. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
72. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
73. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
74. Voyager 1
75. Voyager 2
76. Voyager 2 launches
77. Voyager 1 launches
78. Voyager 1
79. Voyager 2
80. Io
81. The Grand Tour alignment
82. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
83. Active volcanism found on Io
84. Voyager 2 closest approach to Jupiter
85. Pioneer 10
86. Pioneer 11
87. Galileo
88. Cassini–Huygens
89. New Horizons
90. Juno
91. Pioneer 10 passes Jupiter — the first spacecraft to reach the outer Solar System
92. Pioneer 11 passes Jupiter, bending north toward Saturn
93. Galileo enters orbit around Jupiter — the first outer-planet orbiter
94. Galileo is flown into Jupiter to end its mission
95. Cassini passes Jupiter for a final speed boost toward Saturn
96. New Horizons takes a gravity assist at Jupiter
97. Juno enters polar orbit around Jupiter
98. Voyager 2
99. Triton
100. The Grand Tour alignment
101. Voyager 2 passes Neptune and Triton, ending the planetary programme
102. Voyager 1
103. Voyager 2
104. Titan
105. The Grand Tour alignment
106. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
107. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
108. Pioneer 11
109. Cassini–Huygens
110. Pioneer 11 passes Saturn — the first spacecraft to reach it
111. Cassini enters orbit around Saturn
112. Cassini’s Grand Finale — flown into Saturn to end the mission
113. Voyager 2
114. The Grand Tour alignment
115. Voyager 2 reaches Uranus — the only close encounter ever made
116. Voyager 2
117. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
118. The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
119. Voyager 1
120. Voyager 2
121. Voyager 2 launches
122. Voyager 1 launches
123. Evidence
124. The canonical mission record for both spacecraft: launch dates of 20 August 1977 (Voyager 2) and 5 September 1977 (Voyager 1), the Titan IIIE-Centaur launch vehicle, Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, the eleven-instrument science payload and the three-generator power system. V55 verification basis: THE CATALOGUE WAS NOT REACHED. nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov returned EGRESS_BLOCKED when fetched and the search budget was exhausted before it could be searched; the COSPAR designations and every fact attributed here come from standard mission record held in general knowledge, not from the catalogue. This record names where a curator should check, not what was checked.
125. Both spacecraft were still operating in 2026, with Voyager 1 in the region of 170 astronomical units and Voyager 2 in the region of 140 AU, operating a reduced set of fields-and-particles instruments. V55 verification basis: the NASA pages could not be fetched (science.nasa.gov is blocked to this session) and the distance figures reaching this record came from third-party trackers summarising them; treat the AU values as indicative and date-dependent, not as read from NASA's ephemeris. Voyager 1's speed is also quoted inconsistently across trackers because some report a heliocentric speed of about 17 km/s and others an Earth-relative speed that varies with Earth's orbital position.
126. Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause on 5 November 2018 at 119 AU; a boundary layer about 1.5 AU wide preceded it in which the plasma slowed, heated and was roughly twice as dense as typical heliosheath plasma; the transition took less than a day, and the interstellar plasma immediately outside was hotter than predicted, of order 30,000–50,000 °C against a prediction nearer 15,000–30,000 °C. V55 verification basis: the paper was not fetched — nature.com is blocked to this session — but search results carried these figures and attributed them to it.
127. On 9 July 2026 JPL executed a single command sequence switching off two heaters and a digital tape recorder retained only for its residual heat while switching on two different heaters and a further heat-supplying device, reducing power demand by close to ten watts a year; without it another Voyager 2 instrument would have been shut down before the end of 2026, and the saving is expected to keep three instruments running for at least an additional year, with engineers suggesting up to about two extra years per spacecraft. V55 verification basis: this is secondary reporting of a JPL action; no JPL statement was retrieved, and the descriptions of exactly which devices were switched differ slightly between outlets.
128. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off on 25 February 2025 and Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument on 24 March 2025; both spacecraft lose about four watts of generator output per year; three science instruments continued to operate on each; Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument was to run through 2025 and be switched off in 2026, and Voyager 2's cosmic ray subsystem was scheduled for shutdown in 2026, with the plan expected to keep at least one instrument running on each spacecraft into the 2030s. V55 verification basis: the release was not fetched — jpl.nasa.gov and science.nasa.gov are both blocked by this session's network egress proxy — but search results carried these specific figures and dates and attributed them to this release.