Voyager 2

node · earth · Interstellar space, on a southward trajectory out of the ecliptic plane

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.