The Voyager 2 spacecraft is a 722 kg (1,590 lb) space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. It was actually launched before Voyager 1, but Voyager 1 moved faster and eventually passed it. It has been operating for 35 years, 3 months and 4 days as of today (24 November 2012), the spacecraft still receives and transmits data via the Deep Space Network. At a distance of 100.675 AU (1.51×1010 km; 9.36×109 mi) as of November 2012, it is one of the most distant manmade objects (along with Voyager 1, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11).
Voyager 2 is part of the Voyager program with its identical sister craft Voyager 1, and is in extended mission, tasked with locating and studying the boundaries of the Solar System, including the Kuiper belt, the heliosphere and interstellar space. The primary mission ended December 31, 1989 after encountering the Jovian system in 1979, Saturnian system in 1980, Uranian system in 1986, and the Neptunian system in 1989. It is still the only spacecraft to have visited the two outer gas giant planets Uranus and Neptune.
Read more about Voyager 2: Mission Profile, Launch and Trajectory, Interstellar Mission, Current Status
Famous quotes containing the word voyager:
“What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)