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Voyager 2
Launched on August 20, 1977, flew past Jupiter (July 9, 1979) and Saturn (August 25, 1981), and became the first spacecraft to encounter Uranus (January 24, 1986) and Neptune (August 24, 1989). In September 2007, Voyager 2 was about 12.5 billion km (7.8 billion miles) from the Sun, equivalent to a round-trip light-travel time of just over 23 hr 50 min. Its departure speed from the solar system is 15.7 km/s (35,176 mph).
The future trajectory of Voyager 2 among the stars was determined by its final planetary encounter, with Neptune. An earlier planned route past Neptune would have resulted in the probe coming within 0.8 light-years of Sirius in just under 500,000 years from now – easily the closest and most interesting foreseeable stellar encounter of the four escaping probes. However, the Neptune flyby trajectory actually chosen (the "polar crown" trajectory) means that the nearest Voyager 2 will come to any star in the next million years is 1.65 light-years when it passes Ross 248 in about 40,000 years. Like Voyager 1, it is now involved in the Voyager Interstellar Mission.
Related entries
• Voyager interstellar record
• interstellar probes
Related category
• SATELLITES AND SPACE PROBES
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