voyager 2 spacecraft location

We Finally Know What Happened When Voyager 2 Reached Interstellar Space

A few big takeaways from the craft's incredible journey.

• Scientists have finally analyzed data from Voyager 2’s journey to interstellar space and discovered remarkable insight into conditions at the edge of our solar system .
• The spacecraft reached the interstellar boundary between our solar system and interstellar space in 2018. Voyager 1 reached the boundary in 2012.
• Both spacecraft were launched in 1977, and have far surpassed scientists' expectations.

Scientists have finally analyzed data from Voyager 2’s journey to interstellar space and discovered a number of surprising differences—plus a few strange similarities.

Voyager 1 and 2 launched in August and October of 1977, respectively, and set out to explore the far reaches of the solar system and beyond. The spacecraft have revealed a vast amount of insight into distant planets and snapped pictures of previously undiscovered moons. Still, more than 40 years after their launch, they continue to provide scientists with an unparalleled look at the universe.

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. Last year, Voyager 2 joined its companion in the interstellar medium, reaching the boundary set 119 times the Earth–sun distance away from Earth. The transition from our solar system to interstellar space, the researchers say, may take less than a day to cross. The data from Voyager 2’s crossing was published November 4 in a series of five papers in Nature Astronomy .

The heliopause is the theoretical boundary at which the sun’s solar wind meets interstellar winds, which are shot out from supernovae that have exploded millions of years ago. Additionally, galactic cosmic rays try to flow into our solar system, but only 30 percent of these rays actually reach Earth. Voyager 1 and 2 were also able to study changes in the magnetic fields within and outside of our solar system.

The two spacecraft reached interstellar space during different periods of solar activity, meaning conditions along the boundary were markedly different. Voyager 1 reached the interstellar boundary during the sun’s solar minimum, whereas Voyager 2 reached the boundary during the solar maximum, a period of heightened activity. Additionally, unlike its quicker counterpart, Voyager 2’s mission has largely taken place in Earth’s southern hemisphere.

The researchers also discovered that solar material was “leaking” out into the interstellar medium. “That was very different than what happened with Voyager 1, where hardly any material was leaking out,” said Tom Krimigis of John’s Hopkins’s Applied Physics Laboratory in an October 31 press conference.

In the case of Voyager 1, the team saw the opposite, where interstellar particles leaked into our solar system. The team hopes to reconvene to take a closer look at their data in the near future to understand how and why these particles slip out of the grasp of our solar system.

Another perplexing discovery? The direction of the magnetic fields both inside and outside of the heliopause is aligned, as was the case with Voyager 1. Leonard Burlaga of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said scientists can dismiss the alignment of the magnetic fields once, but twice would be a remarkable coincidence. The strength of the magnetic field was stronger in interstellar space, the Voyager 2 found.

The scientists also discovered that the heliopause itself is much thinner and smoother than expected, and that the interstellar medium tucked close to the boundary layer, where solar and interstellar winds meet, is much hotter and unpredictable than expected. This newest research also revealed that the boundary layer itself may be more complex than initially thought, with multiple layers of different temperature, density, and speed.

Voyager 1 and 2 have roughly five years before they'll lose the use of their scientific instruments, said Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology during the press conference. "When the two voyagers were launched, the space age was only 20 years old, Stone said. "So it was hard to know at that time that anything could last over 40 years."

There's still a lot left to explore, and the data dump has sparked a desire to explore faster, farther, and deeper into interstellar space.

Jennifer Leman is a science journalist and senior features editor at Popular Mechanics, Runner's World, and Bicycling. A graduate of the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz, her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Science News and Nature. Her favorite stories illuminate Earth's many wonders and hazards.

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The most distant spacecraft in the solar system — Where are they now?

Humans have been flinging things into deep space for 50 years now, since the 1972 launch of Pioneer 10. We now have five spacecraft that have either reached the edges of our solar system or are fast approaching it: Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons. 

Most of these probes have defied their expected deaths and are still operating long beyond their original mission plans. These spacecraft were originally planned to explore our neighboring planets, but now they're blazing a trail out of the solar system , providing astronomers with unique vantage points in space — and they've been up to a lot in 2022.

Voyagers 1 and 2

The Voyager missions celebrated a very special anniversary this year: 45 years of operations . From close fly-bys of the outer planets to exploring humans' furthest reach in space, these two spacecraft have contributed immensely to astronomers' understanding of the solar system. 

Related : Voyager: 15 incredible images of our solar system captured by the twin probes (gallery)  

Their main project now is exploring where the sun 's influence ends, and other stars' influences begin. Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the sun's flow of particles ceases to be the most important influence, in 2012 with Voyager 2 following close after, in 2018. 

"Voyager 1 has now been in interstellar space for a decade…and it's still going, still going strong," Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist and a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, told Space.com.

The mission team hit one major hiccup this year, when the spacecraft began sending home garbled information about its location. The engineers found the cause — the spacecraft was using a bad piece of computer hardware when it shouldn't have — and restored operations.

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These kinds of incidents are to be expected with an aging spacecraft, though. The team is also actively managing the power supply onboard each spacecraft, which is dwindling each year as the probes' radioactive generators grow increasingly inefficient. This year, mission personnel turned off heaters keeping a number of scientific instruments on board warm in the harsh, cold environment of space — and, much to everyone's surprise, those instruments are still working perfectly well.

The cameras may have been turned off decades ago, but the spacecrafts' other instruments are collecting data on the plasma and magnetic fields from the sun at a great distance away from the star itself. Because particles of the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles flowing off the sun — take time to travel such a long way, distant observations allow scientists to see how changes from the sun propagate throughout our cosmic neighborhood. 

The edges of the solar system have been full of surprises, too. It would make sense that plasma from the sun becomes more sparse and spread out as you move away from the center of the solar system, but in fact, the Voyagers have encountered much denser plasma after crossing the heliopause. Astronomers are still puzzled about that one.

"It's just so amazing that even after all this time we continue to see the sun's influence in interstellar space," Spilker said. "I'm looking forward to Voyager continuing to operate, perhaps reaching the 50th anniversary." 

Pioneers 10 and 11

The Pioneer spacecraft hold a special place in space history because of their role as, you guessed it, pioneers. Unfortunately, these milestone 50-year-old spacecraft are non-functional — Pioneer 10 lost communications back in 2003, and Pioneer 11 has been silent since its last contact in 1995. 

But both these spacecraft are marks of humanity's presence in the solar system, and they are still continuing on their journeys, even if we're not sending them commands or firing their rockets anymore. Once a spacecraft is set on a trajectory out of the solar system, according to the laws of physics, it won't stop unless something changes its course.

New Horizons

New Horizons is by far the youngest sibling of these groundbreaking missions, having just launched in 2006 . After completing its famous flyby of dwarf planet Pluto in 2015 , this probe has been zooming out of the solar system at record speed, set to reach the heliopause around 2040. 

Not only has it completed its primary mission, but it successfully completed a flyby of the smaller Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth , in 2019 as its first mission extension. Earlier this year, the spacecraft was put into hibernation mode because an extended mission hadn't yet been approved. But now, the team is excitedly moving into New Horizons' 2nd Kuiper Belt Extended Mission, or KEM2 for short. KEM2 began on Oct. 1 , although the spacecraft will hibernate until March 1, 2023.

In the meantime, the mission team is preparing for exciting new observations. With cutting-edge instruments — far more advanced than what the Voyagers carried in the 1970s — the team is prepared to use New Horizons as a powerhouse observatory in the distant solar system, providing a viewpoint we can't achieve here on Earth . 

Bonnie Burrati, planetary scientist at JPL and member of the New Horizons team, is particularly looking forward to new views of Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), the chunks of ice and rock beyond Neptune . New Horizons' unique position in the outer solar system provides new angles of looking at these KBOs, she said. Different views can tell astronomers about how rough the objects' surfaces are, among other things, based on how light scatters and creates shadows on them. 

Another planetary scientist on the team from Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, Leslie Young, wants to use the spacecraft for a new look at something closer to home: the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. New Horizons’ unique viewpoint provides scientists with information about how light scatters through the planets’ atmospheres—information we can’t get from here on Earth, since we can’t see Uranus and Neptune from that angle. Planetary scientists are eager for more information about these planets, especially as NASA begins planning for a new mission to visit Uranus.

— The icy 'space snowman' Arrokoth in deep space just got names for its best features — Pale Blue Dot at 30: Voyager 1's iconic photo of Earth from space reveals our place in the universe — Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons mission in pictures  

When the spacecraft wakes from hibernation, it will be past the so-called "Kuiper cliff," where scientists currently think there are far fewer large KBOs. "When we look at other star systems, we see debris disks extending to much larger distances from their host stars," Bryan Holler, an astronomer at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, told Space.com. "If ET were to look at our solar system, would they see the same thing?"

This next extended mission will even venture beyond New Horizons' original domain of planetary science. Now, the spacecraft will provide better-than-ever measurements of the background of light and cosmic rays in space, trace the distributions of dust throughout our solar system, and obtain crucial information on the sun's influence, complimentary to the Voyagers. Since the three functional far out spacecraft are heading in separate directions, they allow astronomers to map out irregularities in the solar system's structure.

Luckily for New Horizons, signs indicate that the spacecraft will have enough power to last through the 2040s and possibly beyond — each year, moving 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) farther into uncharted territory.

Follow the author at @ briles_34 on Twitter. Follow us on Twitter @ Spacedotcom and on Facebook .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Briley Lewis (she/her) is a freelance science writer and Ph.D. Candidate/NSF Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles studying Astronomy & Astrophysics. Follow her on Twitter @briles_34 or visit her website www.briley-lewis.com . 

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Voyager 1 enters interstellar space in an illustration. The NASA spacecraft officially crossed into the space between the stars in 2012.

Both of NASA's Voyager spacecraft are now interstellar. Where to next?

Launched in 1977, the twin probes will likely outlive the sun. Find out what star systems they’ll meet as they head deeper into the galaxy.

NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft have been traveling the interstellar road for more than 40 years, sweeping past the giant planets of the outer solar system before heading to the very fringes of our sun’s domain. Now, one probe has achieved a milestone in exploration: On December 10, NASA announced that Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space , six years after Voyager 1 first crossed the threshold. The twins are the only two spacecraft ever to venture so far from home.

To confirm Voyager 2's exit, scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft's Plasma Science Experiment , which measured the heliopause—the boundary between the sun's protective plasma bubble and interstellar space. On November 5, the instrument recorded a steep decline in particles from the sun's plasma. At the same time, Voyager 2 saw more high-energy particles from elsewhere in the galaxy, confirming that the probe had left our cosmic cul-de-sac.

"Working on Voyager makes me feel like an explorer, because everything we're seeing is new," MIT researcher John Richardson, the principal investigator for the plasma experiment, said in a statement . "Even though Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause in 2012, it did so at a different place and a different time, and without the PLS data. So we're still seeing things that no one has seen before."

But even at more than 11 billion miles from the sun, the Voyagers’ story is just beginning. On their current paths, both probes will still be heading outward across the galaxy eons after they escape the gravitational tug of the sun, and perhaps long after our star dies in four or five billion years. Should the spacecraft ever be intercepted by an alien civilization, two golden records bearing the sights and sounds of planet Earth could play the last whispers of a long-dead planet.

Assuming they stay on course, it’s going to be a lonely trip for the Voyagers, because even though our Earthly skies appear to glitter with countless pinpricks of light, space is mostly empty. Distances between the stars are so vast that even when our galaxy smashes into the one next door , not much will happen in the way of stellar collisions.

Still, according to astronomers’ predictions, their cosmic treks will bring the Voyagers close to several starry milestones and a dust cloud or three over the next hundred thousand or so years. Here are some of the known cosmic landmarks the Voyagers could meet in their relatively near futures.

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Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 20, 1977, the dairy cow-size Voyager 2 began its odyssey with a grand tour of the outer solar system, making vital discoveries at Jupiter and Saturn and returning some of the best views yet of Uranus and Neptune.

The probe is now dipping below the plane of the solar system at roughly 34,500 miles an hour and heading celestially south, toward the constellation Sagittarius. On November 5, 2018, it crossed the heliopause, exiting the sun’s protective plasma bubble.

Voyager 2 may be freshly interstellar, but it won’t be anywhere near another star until 40,000 years from now, when it will pass within 1.7 light-years of the small red dwarf star Ross 248. At that point, Ross 248 will be the closest star to our sun, briefly eclipsing the Alpha Centauri system’s claim to fame as its path through the galaxy brings it just 3.02 light-years away.

About 61,000 years from now, Voyager 2 will pass beyond the Oort Cloud—a large, diffuse swarm of icy objects that is thought to extend as far as 200,000 times farther from the sun than Earth, says Wesleyan University’s Seth Redfield .

Voyager 2 may be freshly interstellar, but it won’t be anywhere near another star until 40,000 years from now.

Most scientists think the Oort cloud is the source of comets that take thousands of years to complete one orbit around the sun. It could also be the true boundary of the solar system, if you consider that to be the point where the sun’s gravitational influence drops off.

“The outer edge of the Oort Cloud is approximately where that is,” says Redfield, who has used the Hubble Space Telescope to study the Voyagers’ paths in detail for the next hundred thousand years, and more crudely for the next several million.

Next, in the year 298,000 Voyager 2 will swing within about four light-years of Sirius, the brightest star in Earth’s sky. It’ll then brush by two stars, delta Pav and GJ 754, about a hundred thousand years later.

Voyager 1 followed its twin into the sky on September 5, 1977. It rendezvoused with Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980, returning some spectacular views of volcanoes erupting on the Jovian moon Io, then continued outward.

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On February 14, 1990, it swiveled to capture the solar system retreating from its view, including a series of images that revealed our pale blue planet looking like “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” according to Carl Sagan.

Now traveling more than 35,000 miles an hour in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, Voyager 1 is the fastest human-made object in space. In 2013, it became the first spacecraft to leave the heliosphere and cross into interstellar space.

In the year 40,272, the spacecraft will sail within 1.7 light-years of the star Gliese 445 in the constellation Camelopardalis.

In 56,000 years, Voyager 1 will exit the Oort cloud, then brush by the stars GJ 686 and GJ 678 in 570,000 years.

Wandering Wonders

Beyond that, both spacecraft will continue on their journeys outward, passing through scattered dust clouds on their way through the local bubble, a cavern of relatively empty space blown by tempestuous dying stars. They’ll exit this bubble in 5.7 and 6.3 million years, respectively.

From there, things get murky. The peculiar motions of stars and dust clouds orbiting the galactic center aren’t well known yet, and the spacecraft could be slowed by sailing through dust clouds. Plus, gravitational encounters with things like wandering, starless planets could bounce the probes around like billiard balls.

“There may be a whole population of rogue planets out in interstellar space,” Redfield says. “A mildly close encounter with one of those could change the itinerary of the Voyagers.”

Ultimately, like the stars in the Milky Way, the Voyagers will march to the galaxy’s tune and orbit its core for the rest of their lives.

“All the stars in the solar neighborhood are in an orbit around the center of the Milky Way, with orbital periods of 225 to 250 million years,” says Voyager project scientist Ed Stone . “The Voyagers will also be in such independent orbits, completing an orbit every 225 million years for billions of years until a collision with another galaxy disrupts this orderly flow.”

That might occur in four billion years, when the neighboring Andromeda galaxy smashes into the Milky Way and rearranges our skies in spectacular ways.

How the Voyagers’ ultimate demise occurs—whether it’s death by a thousand micrometeorite impacts, or one large improbable collision—remains a mystery. It’s even possible the Voyagers will outlive the solar system, surviving long after the sun’s death sculpts our neighborhood into a dramatically different place.

“The universe tends to do a great job of preserving its occupants,” Redfield says. After all, “the objects in our solar system, even small objects, have been around for 4.5 billion years.”

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The Voyager missions

Highlights Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977 and made a grand tour of the solar system's outer planets. They are the only functioning spacecraft in interstellar space, and they are still sending back measurements of the interstellar medium. Each spacecraft carries a copy of the golden record, a missive from Earth to any alien lifeforms that may find the probes in the future.

What are the Voyager missions?

The Voyager program consists of two spacecraft: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Voyager 2 was actually launched first, in August 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.

Voyager 2’s path took it past Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981, Uranus in 1985, and Neptune in 1989. It is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus or Neptune, and has provided much of the information that we use to characterize them now.

Because of its higher speed and more direct trajectory, Voyager 1 overtook Voyager 2 just a few months after they launched. It visited Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980. It overtook Pioneer 10 — the only other spacecraft in interstellar space thus far — in 1998 and is now the most distant artificial object from Earth.

How the Voyagers work

The two spacecraft are identical, each with a radio dish 3.7 meters (12 feet) across to transmit data back to Earth and a set of 16 thrusters to control their orientations and point their dishes toward Earth. The thrusters run on hydrazine fuel, but the electronic components of each spacecraft are powered by thermoelectric generators that run on plutonium. Each carries 11 scientific instruments, about half of which were designed just for observing planets and have now been shut off. The instruments that are now off include several cameras and spectrometers to examine the planets, as well as two radio-based experiments. Voyager 2 now has five functioning instruments: a magnetometer, a spectrometer designed to investigate plasmas, an instrument to measure low-energy charged particles and one for cosmic rays, and one that measures plasma waves. Voyager 1 only has four of those, as its plasma spectrometer is broken.

Jupiter findings

Over the course of their grand tours of the solar system, the Voyagers took tens of thousands of images and measurements that significantly changed our understanding of the outer planets.

At Jupiter, they gave us our first detailed ideas of how the planet’s atmosphere moves and evolves, showing that the Great Red Spot was a counter-clockwise rotating storm that interacted with other, smaller storms. They were also the first missions to spot a faint, dusty ring around Jupiter. Finally, they observed some of Jupiter’s moons, discovering Io’s volcanism, finding the linear features on Europa that were among the first hints that it might have an ocean beneath its surface, and granting Ganymede the title of largest moon in the solar system, a superlative that was previously thought to belong to Saturn’s moon Titan.

Saturn findings

Next, each spacecraft flew past Saturn, where they measured the composition and structure of Saturn’s atmosphere , and Voyager 1 also peered into Titan’s thick haze. Its observations led to the idea that Titan might have liquid hydrocarbons on its surface, a hypothesis that has since been verified by other missions. When the two missions observed Saturn’s rings, they found the gaps and waves that are well-known today. Voyager 1 also spotted three previously-unknown moons orbiting Saturn: Atlas, Prometheus, and Pandora.

Uranus and Neptune findings

After this, Voyager 1 headed out of the solar system, while Voyager 2 headed toward Uranus . There, it found 11 previously-unknown moons and two previously-unknown rings. Many of the phenomena it observed on Uranus remained unexplained, such as its unusual magnetic field and an unexpected lack of major temperature changes at different latitudes.

Voyager 2’s final stop, 12 years after it left Earth, was Neptune. When it arrived , it continued its streak of finding new moons with another haul of 6 small satellites, as well as finding rings around Neptune. As it did at Uranus, it observed the planet’s composition and magnetic field. It also found volcanic vents on Neptune’s huge moon Triton before it joined Voyager 1 on the way to interstellar space.

Interstellar space

Interstellar space begins at the heliopause, where the solar wind – a flow of charged particles released by the sun – is too weak to continue pushing against the interstellar medium, and the pressure from the two balances out. Voyager 1 officially entered interstellar space in August 2012, and Voyager 2 joined it  in November 2018.

These exits were instrumental in enabling astronomers to determine where exactly the edge of interstellar space is, something that’s difficult to measure from within the solar system. They showed that interstellar space begins just over 18 billion kilometers (about 11 billion miles) from the sun. The spacecraft continue to send back data on the structure of the interstellar medium.

After its planetary encounters, Voyager 1 took the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” image , showing Earth from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) away. As of 2021 , Voyager 1 is about 155 astronomical units (14.4 billion miles) from Earth, and Voyager 2 is nearly 129 astronomical units (12 billion miles) away.

The golden records

Each Voyager spacecraft has a golden phonograph record affixed to its side, intended as time capsules from Earth to any extraterrestrial life that might find the probes sometime in the distant future. They are 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.”

The covers of the records have several images inscribed, including visual instructions on how to play them, a map of our solar system’s location with respect to a set of 14 pulsars, and a drawing of a hydrogen atom. They are plated with uranium – its rate of decay will allow any future discoverers of either of the records to calculate when they were created.

The records’ contents were selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. Each contains 115 images, including scientific diagrams of the solar system and its planets, the flora and fauna of Earth, and examples of human culture. There are natural sounds, including breaking surf and birdsong, spoken greetings in 55 languages, an hour of brainwave recordings, and an eclectic selection of music ranging from Beethoven to Chuck Berry to a variety of folk music.

Learn more Voyager Mission Status Bulletin Archives Experience A Message From Earth - Inspired by the Voyager Golden Record Neptune, planet of wind and ice

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Voyager 1 and 2: The Interstellar Mission

An image of Neptune taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

NASA has beautiful photos of every planet in our solar system. We even have images of faraway Neptune , as you can see in the photo above.

Neptune is much too distant for an astronaut to travel there with a camera. So, how do we have pictures from distant locations in our solar system? Our photographers were two spacecraft, called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2!

An artist’s rendering of one of the Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched from Earth in 1977. Their mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn —and beyond to the outer planets of our solar system. This was a big task. No human-made object had ever attempted a journey like that before.

The two spacecraft took tens of thousands of pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons. The pictures from Voyager 1 and 2 allowed us to see lots of things for the first time. For example, they captured detailed photos of Jupiter's clouds and storms, and the structure of Saturn's rings .

Image of storms on Jupiter taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

Voyager 1 and 2 also discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io , and much more. Voyager 2 also took pictures of Uranus and Neptune. Together, the Voyager missions discovered 22 moons.

Since then, these spacecraft have continued to travel farther away from us. Voyager 1 and 2 are now so far away that they are in interstellar space —the region between the stars. No other spacecraft have ever flown this far away.

Where will Voyager go next?

Watch this video to find out what's beyond our solar system!

Both spacecraft are still sending information back to Earth. This data will help us learn about conditions in the distant solar system and interstellar space.

The Voyagers have enough fuel and power to operate until 2025 and beyond. Sometime after this they will not be able to communicate with Earth anymore. Unless something stops them, they will continue to travel on and on, passing other stars after many thousands of years.

Each Voyager spacecraft also carries a message. Both spacecraft carry a golden record with scenes and sounds from Earth. The records also contain music and greetings in different languages. So, if intelligent life ever find these spacecraft, they may learn something about Earth and us as well!

A photo of the golden record that was sent into space on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

More about our universe!

Where does interstellar space begin?

Searching for other planets like ours

Play Galactic Explorer!

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After a 12.3 billion-mile 'shout,' NASA regains full contact with Voyager 2

Emily Olson

Ayana Archie

A NASA image of one of the twin Voyager space probes. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after mistakenly pointing its antenna 2 degrees away from Earth. On Friday, contact was fully restored. NASA/Getty Images hide caption

A NASA image of one of the twin Voyager space probes. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after mistakenly pointing its antenna 2 degrees away from Earth. On Friday, contact was fully restored.

Talk about a long-distance call.

NASA said it resumed full communications with the Voyager 2 on Friday after almost two weeks of silence from the interstellar spacecraft.

The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said a series of ground antennas, part of the Deep Space Network, registered a carrier signal from Voyager 2 on Tuesday. However, the signal was too faint.

A Deep Space Network facility in Australia then sent "the equivalent of an interstellar 'shout' " to the Voyager 2 telling it to turn its antenna back toward Earth. The signal was sent more than 12.3 billion miles away and it took 37 hours to get a response from the spacecraft, NASA said.

Scientists received a response at about 12:30 a.m. ET Friday. Voyager 2 is now operating normally, returning science and telemetry data, and "remains on its expected trajectory," NASA said.

NASA said Friday that it lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after "a series of planned commands" inadvertently caused the craft to turn its antenna 2 degrees away from the direction of its home planet.

NASA is keeping Voyager 2 going until at least 2026 by tapping into backup power

What might seem like a slight error had big consequences: NASA previously said it wouldn't be able to communicate with the craft until October, when the satellite would go through one of its routine repositioning steps.

"That is a long time to wait, so we'll try sending up commands several times" before October, program manager Suzanne Dodd told The Associated Press.

These are the 4 astronauts who'll take a trip around the moon next year

Even if Voyager 2 had failed to reestablish communications until fall, the engineers expected it to stay moving on its planned trajectory on the edge of the solar system.

Voyager 2 entered interstellar space in November 2018 — more than 40 years since it launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. To this day, Voyager 2 remains one of only two human-made objects to ever operate outside the heliosphere, which NASA defines as "the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun."

Its primary mission was to study the outer solar system, and already, Voyager 2 has proved its status as a planetary pioneer . Equipped with several imaging instruments, the spacecraft is credited with documenting the discovery of 16 new moons, six new rings and Neptune's "Great Dark Spot."

Voyager 2 Bids Adieu To The Heliosphere, Entering Interstellar Space

Voyager 2 is also carrying some precious cargo, like a message in a bottle, should it find itself as the subject of another world's discovery: a golden record containing a variety of natural sounds, greetings in 55 languages and a 90-minute selection of music.

Last month's command mix-up foreshadows the craft's inevitable end an estimated three years from now.

"Eventually, there will not be enough electricity to power even one instrument," reads a NASA page documenting the spacecraft's travels . "Then, Voyager 2 will silently continue its eternal journey among the stars."

Meanwhile, Voyager 2's sister spacecraft, Voyager 1, is still broadcasting and transmitting data just fine from a slightly farther vantage point of 15 billion miles away.

Correction Aug. 3, 2023

A previous version of this article implied that Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 2018 when, in fact, the spacecraft concluded its encounter with the planet and started heading toward Neptune in 1986. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space in November 2018.

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Voyager 2 Enters Final Planetary Encounter

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft today entered the observatoryphase of its flyby of Neptune, signaling the beginning of its final planetary encounter after nearly 12 years of exploring the outer solar system.

Voyager mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will now be tracking the spacecraft around the clock as Voyager begins taking systematic images of Neptune and sending back about 50 pictures day.

"Now that we've entered the observatory phase we'll be taking about six images every three hours to study changes in the atmosphere from rotation to rotation," said Dr. Ellis Miner, Voyager deputy project scientist.

Signals from Voyager 2 marking the beginning of the observatory phase were received at 3:40 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. This official start of the Neptune encounter places Voyager at the top of the priority list of spacecraft being tracked by the NASA/JPL Deep Space Network. Before today, Voyager had to compete with other projects for DSN coverage. During the observatory phase, the spacecraft will be monitored at regular intervals by more than one antenna at each of the DSN sites in California, Spain and Australia.

In addition to taking images of the planet, Voyager 2 will also be making systematic ultraviolet observations of Neptune looking for any auroral activity and escaping gases. Calibrations of the spacecraft's instruments will also be done in preparation for critical near-encounter observations.

In observations of Neptune made by Voyager 2 in late 1988 and January of 1989, scientists saw bright spot in the southern hemisphere of the planet. Since January, that spot has dimmed and larger dark area has been seen in the images. Recently, the bright spot has begun to brighten again and other spots are becoming apparent. Neptune's atmosphere has also revealed regions of dark banding near its southern pole and similar banding has been seen north of the planet's equator.

Voyager's observatory phase ends and its far encounter phase starts on Aug. 6, 1989.

The near-encounter phase of the mission includes Voyager's closest approach to Neptune at 9 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Aug. 24, 1989, when the spacecraft passes just 4,850 kilometers (3,000 miles) from the planet's cloud tops. Five hours later, the spacecraft will fly about 39,000 kilometers (24,000 miles) from the planet's major moon Triton.

Voyager 2 is now 117 million kilometers (73 million miles) from Neptune. The Neptune flyby will be Voyager 2's fourth and final planetary encounter before the spacecraft heads out of the solar system to explore interstellar space.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 have encountered Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 went on to fly by Uranus in January 1986 while Voyager 1 continues its trek out of the solar system.

Now 4.271 billion kilometers (2.654 billion miles) from Earth, Voyager 2 is so far away that data radioed at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) take nearly four hours to reach Earth. Voyager's images are being recorded on the spacecraft's tape recorders and will be played back to Earth beginning Tuesday morning.

The Voyager project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications.

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40 years ago: voyager 2 explores saturn, johnson space center.

Forty years ago, the Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Voyagers are a pair of spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets. Initially targeted only to visit Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 went on to investigate Uranus and Neptune as well, taking advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 175 years to use the gravity of one planet to redirect it to the next. Although not the first to explore the ringed planet – Pioneer 11 completed the first flyby in 1979 – the Voyagers carried more sophisticated instruments to conduct in-depth investigations. Voyager 2’s twin, Voyager 1 , made its closest approach to Saturn in November 1980. Forty-four years after their departure from Earth, both spacecraft continue to operate and report on the conditions of interstellar space.

Each Voyager carried a suite of 11 instruments, including: 

• an imaging science system consisting of narrow-angle and wide-angle cameras to photograph the planet and its satellites;
• a radio science system to determine the planet’s physical properties;
• an infrared interferometer spectrometer to investigate local and global energy balance and atmospheric composition;
• an ultraviolet spectrometer to measure atmospheric properties;
• a magnetometer to analyze the planet’s magnetic field and interaction with the solar wind;
• a plasma spectrometer to investigate microscopic properties of plasma ions;
• a low energy charged particle device to measure fluxes and distributions of ions;
• a cosmic ray detection system to determine the origin and behavior of cosmic radiation;
• a planetary radio astronomy investigation to study radio emissions from Jupiter;
• a photopolarimeter to measure the planet’s surface composition; and
• a plasma wave system to study the planet’s magnetosphere.

Voyager 2 launched first on Aug. 20, 1977. The spacecraft successfully crossed the asteroid belt between Dec. 10, 1977, and Oct. 21, 1978. In April 1978, its primary radio receiver failed, and it has been operating on its backup receiver ever since. The spacecraft flew within 350,000 miles of Jupiter’s cloud tops on July 9, 1979, and during the four-month encounter returned 17,000 photographs and useful scientific information about the giant planet and many of its moons.  Using the giant planet for a gravity assist, Voyager 2 began its 29-month journey to its next destination, Saturn. Following Voyager 1’s successful encounter with Saturn , and especially its important study of Titan, in November 1980, mission planners targeted Voyager 2 so it could image some of the moons not studied by its twin and use Saturn’s gravity to speed it onward to encounter Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.

Voyager 2 began its long-range observations of Saturn on June 5, 1981, when the spacecraft was still 41 million miles from the planet, and sent back progressively sharper images of the planet, its atmosphere, and its rings as Voyager 2 closed in on its target. It returned spectacular photographs of the rings and small shepherd moons such as Prometheus and Pandora that act to herd the rings’ particles. Three days before its closest approach to Saturn, Voyager 2 imaged the two-toned moon Iapetus from 565,000 miles away, and two days later it photographed the moon Hyperion from 310,000 miles. Eighteen hours before closest approach, it passed within 413,000 miles of Saturn’s largest satellite Titan and returned images of its orange cloud cover. After passing within 26,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud tops, Voyager 2 photographed the icy moon Enceladus from 54,000 miles, the small moon Janus from 140,000 miles, and Tethys from 58,000 miles. Three days after its closest approach, Voyager 2 turned its camera on a partially backlit Saturn, returning stunning photographs from 2.1 million miles away. On Sept. 4, it imaged the tiny moon Phoebe from 1.3 million miles, revealing little of its surface features. By the time observations of the Saturn system concluded on Sept. 28, the spacecraft had returned 16,000 images of the planet, its rings, and its satellites.

On Sept. 29, the day after completing its observations of Saturn, Voyager 2 fired its thrusters for a course correction to send it onward to its next target, Uranus. In January 1986 , Voyager 2 carried out the first reconnaissance of that planet, its satellites, and its rings. In turn, Voyager 2 picked up a gravity assist at Uranus to send it to its final planetary encounter, exploring Neptune in August 1989 .  Voyager 2 then began its Interstellar Mission extension that continues to this day. Over the years, several of the spacecraft’s instruments have been turned off to conserve power, beginning with the imaging system in 1998, but it continues to return data about cosmic rays and the solar wind. On Nov. 5, 2018, six years after its twin, Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause, the boundary between the heliosphere, the bubble-like region of space created by the Sun, and the interstellar medium. It is expected that Voyager 2 will continue to return data from interstellar space until about 2025. And just in case it may one day be found by an alien intelligence, Voyager 2, like its twin, carries a gold plated record that contains information about its home planet, including recordings of terrestrial sounds, music, and greetings in 55 languages. Scientists thoughtfully included instructions on how to play the record.

The Voyager missions have been probing the universe since 1977

29 August 2024

While astronauts have so far only ventured as far as the Moon, robotic explorers have been revolutionising our knowledge of the Solar System since the early 1960s. Among the most significant of these space probes are the Voyager missions, launched in August 1977 to explore the outer planets and still operating today! 

The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were initially targeted at exploring the planets Jupiter and Saturn. They revealed how dynamic these planets are, with roiling cloud systems and massive cyclonic storms, lightning, auroras and fierce radiation environments. Voyager 1 discovered that Jupiter has a faint ring system, and the two spacecraft unveiled the incredible complexity of Saturn’s glorious ring system, with twists, kinks and shepherd moons that sculpt the shape of the rings.   

These photos of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter were taken by Voyager 1 during its approach to the planet in early March 1979. Io (top left), Europa (top right), Ganymede (bottom left) and Callisto (bottom right) are shown in their correct relative sizes: Ganymede and Callisto are both larger than the planet Mercury; Io and Europa are about the same size as the Moon. 

Image processing also preserves the relative contrasts of the satellites. Thus it is apparent that Europa has the least contrast; Io the greatest. Io is covered with active volcanoes and a surface composed largely of sulfur. Europa is apparently very different; Voyager 1 did not approach Europa closely enough to show its surface in great detail; that remains for Voyager 2. Ganymede and Callisto are both composed mostly of water and water ice; they have large quantities of ice exposed on their surfaces. 

The Io photo was taken from 1.7 million miles (2.9 million kilometers); Europa, 1.7 million miles (2.9 million kilometers); Ganymede, 2 million miles (3.4 million kilometers); and Callisto, 4.1 million miles (6.9 million kilometers). Resolution of all photos except Callisto is about 30 miles (50 kilometers), and for Callisto it is 60 miles (100 kilometers). 

NASA's Voyager 1 image of Io showing active plume of Loki on limb. Heart-shaped feature southeast of Loki consists of fallout deposits from active plume Pele. The images that make up this mosaic were taken from an average distance of approximately 490,000 kilometers (340,000 miles).

This montage of images of the Saturnian system was prepared from an assemblage of images taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft during its Saturn encounter in November 1980. This artist's view shows Dione in the forefront, Saturn rising behind, Tethys and Mimas fading in the distance to the right, Enceladus and Rhea off Saturn's rings to the left, and Titan in its distant orbit at the top.

This picture of Neptune was produced from the last whole planet images taken through the green and orange filters on the Voyager 2 narrow angle camera. The images were taken at a range of 4.4 million miles from the planet, 4 days and 20 hours before closest approach. 

The picture shows the Great Dark Spot and its companion bright smudge; on the west limb the fast moving bright feature called Scooter and the little dark spot are visible. These clouds were seen to persist for as long as Voyager's cameras could resolve them. North of these, a bright cloud band similar to the south polar streak may be seen.

Voyager 2 has discovered two "shepherd" satellites associated with the rings of Uranus. The two moons -- designated 1986U7 and 1986U8 -- are seen here on either side of the bright epsilon ring; all nine of the known Uranian rings are visible. The image was taken Jan. 21, 1986, at a distance of 4.1 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) and resolution of about 36 km (22 mi). The image was processed to enhance narrow features. The epsilon ring appears surrounded by a dark halo as a result of this processing; occasional blips seen on the ring are also artifacts. 

Lying inward from the epsilon ring are the delta, gamma and eta rings; then the beta and alpha rings; and finally the barely visible 4, 5 and 6 rings. The rings have been studied since their discovery in 1977, through observations of how they diminish the light of stars they pass in front of. This image is the first direct observation of all nine rings in reflected sunlight. They range in width from about 100 km (60 mi) at the widest part of the epsilon ring to only a few kilometers for most of the others. 

The discovery of the two ring moons 1986U7 and 1986U8 is a major advance in our understanding of the structure of the Uranian rings and is in good agreement with theoretical predictions of how these narrow rings are kept from spreading out. Based on likely surface brightness properties, the moons are of roughly 20- and 30-km diameter, respectively. 

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft entering interstellar space, or the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago. The environment inside our solar bubble is dominated by the plasma exhausted by our sun, known as the solar wind.

The interstellar plasma is shown with an orange glow similar to the color seen in visible-light images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope that show stars in the Orion nebula traveling through interstellar space.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about Voyager, visit http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .

DSS43 is a 70-meter-wide (230-feet-wide) radio antenna at the Deep Space Network's Canberra facility in Australia. It is the only antenna that can send commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

To infinity and beyond

The largest moons of Jupiter and Saturn, just points of light in telescopes on Earth, were revealed to be fascinating worlds in their own right, with a surprising range of surface features. Jupiter’s moon Io was discovered to have several active volcanoes, the first ever found beyond the Earth, while Saturn’s largest moon Titan proved to have a thick atmosphere of nitrogen, methane, and other complex hydrocarbons. Both spacecraft also discovered several new moons around Jupiter and Saturn. 

The trajectory requirements of its Titan encounter meant that Voyager 1 could not flyby any other planets, but Voyager 2 continued on to visit both Uranus and Neptune, shedding new light on these distant “gas giants”, which had never before been seen close-up. Discoveries of new rings and moons at both planets, in addition to spectacular photos of already known moons were highlights of these encounters. Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, was found to have nitrogen ice “geysers” on its surface. 

Renamed the Voyager Interstellar Mission in 1990, the two spacecraft are now travelling beyond the heliosphere – the giant protective bubble formed around the Sun and its planets by the solar wind. At the beginning of this new phase, Voyager 1, having passed the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, pointed its cameras back toward the Sun and took a series of pictures of the Sun and the planets, which combined to make the first ever 'portrait' of our Solar System as seen from the outside. 

Today, both Voyager spacecraft are still in operation, sending back data about conditions in interstellar space from a small number of instruments. But the Voyagers are showing their age and their have been recent problems. However, the two spacecraft could remain within range of the Deep Space Network until around 2036, depending on how much power they still have to transmit a signal back to Earth.

NASA’s Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex has supported the Voyager spacecraft since they were launched and is today the only station that can communicate with Voyager 2. CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, Murriyang, has also supported the Voyager encounters with Uranus and Neptune, as well as the Interstellar Mission. 

State of the art: local satellites are taking off

In a landmark moment for Australian space, six satellites funded by state and territory governments launched into orbit within a fortnight.

Main image caption: 

This is a montage of planetary images taken by spacecraft managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Included are (from top to bottom) images of Mercury, Venus, Earth (and Moon), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The spacecraft responsible for these images are as follows:

• the Mercury image was taken by Mariner 10,
• the Venus image by Magellan,
• the Earth image by Galileo,
• the Mars image by Viking, and
• the Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune images by Voyager.  

Credit for all images in this news article: NASA/JPL

Our department recognises the First Peoples of this Nation and their ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to the lands, waters, seas, skies, and communities.

We Acknowledge First Nations Peoples as the Traditional Custodians and Lore Keepers of the oldest living culture and pay respects to their Elders past and present. We extend that respect to all First Nations Peoples.

Hubble Provides Interstellar Road Map for Voyagers’ Galactic Trek

NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft are hurtling through unexplored territory on their road trip beyond our solar system. Along the way, they are measuring the interstellar medium, the mysterious environment between stars. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is providing the road map – by measuring the material along the probes’ future trajectories. Even after the Voyagers run out of electrical power and are unable to send back new data, which may happen in about a decade, astronomers can use Hubble observations to characterize the environment through which these silent ambassadors will glide.

A preliminary analysis of the Hubble observations reveals a rich, complex interstellar ecology, containing multiple clouds of hydrogen laced with other elements. Hubble data, combined with the Voyagers, have also provided new insights into how our sun travels through interstellar space.

“This is a great opportunity to compare data from in situ measurements of the space environment by the Voyager spacecraft and telescopic measurements by Hubble,” said study leader Seth Redfield of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. “The Voyagers are sampling tiny regions as they plow through space at roughly 38,000 miles per hour. But we have no idea if these small areas are typical or rare. The Hubble observations give us a broader view because the telescope is looking along a longer and wider path. So Hubble gives context to what each Voyager is passing through.”

The astronomers hope that the Hubble observations will help them characterize the physical properties of the local interstellar medium. “Ideally, synthesizing these insights with in situ measurements from Voyager would provide an unprecedented overview of the local interstellar environment,” said Hubble team member Julia Zachary of Wesleyan University.

The team’s results will be presented Jan. 6 at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.

NASA launched the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977. Both explored the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune.

The pioneering Voyager spacecraft are currently exploring the outermost edge of the sun’s domain . Voyager 1 is now zooming through interstellar space, the region between the stars that is filled with gas, dust, and material recycled from dying stars.

Voyager 1 is 13 billion miles from Earth, making it the farthest human-made object ever built. In about 40,000 years, after the spacecraft will no longer be operational and will not be able to gather new data, it will pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445, in the constellation Camelopardalis. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 10.5 billion miles from Earth, and will pass 1.7 light-years from the star Ross 248 in about 40,000 years.

For the next 10 years, the Voyagers will be making measurements of interstellar material, magnetic fields and cosmic rays along their trajectories. Hubble complements the Voyagers’ observations by gazing at two sight lines along each spacecraft’s path to map interstellar structure along their star-bound routes. Each sight line stretches several light-years to nearby stars. Sampling the light from those stars, Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph measures how interstellar material absorbs some of the starlight, leaving telltale spectral fingerprints.

Hubble found that Voyager 2 will move out of the interstellar cloud that surrounds the solar system in a couple thousand years. The astronomers, based on Hubble data, predict that the spacecraft will spend 90,000 years in a second cloud and pass into a third interstellar cloud.

An inventory of the clouds’ composition reveals slight variations in the abundances of the chemical elements contained in the structures. “These variations could mean the clouds formed in different ways, or from different areas, and then came together,” Redfield said.

An initial look at the Hubble data also suggests that the sun is passing through clumpier material in nearby space, which may affect the heliosphere, the large bubble containing our solar system that is produced by our sun’s powerful solar wind. At its boundary, called the heliopause, the solar wind pushes outward against the interstellar medium. Hubble and Voyager 1 made measurements of the interstellar environment beyond this boundary, where the wind comes from stars other than our sun.

“I’m really intrigued by the interaction between stars and the interstellar environment,” Redfield said. “These kinds of interactions are happening around most stars, and it is a dynamic process.”

The heliosphere is compressed when the sun moves through dense material, but it expands back out when the star passes through low-density matter. This expansion and contraction is caused by the interaction between the outward pressure of the stellar wind, composed of a stream of charged particles, and the pressure of the interstellar material surrounding a star.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C. The Voyagers were built by JPL, which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech.

For images and more information about the local interstellar medium and Hubble, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

For more information about the Voyager mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/voyager

For additional information, contact:

Felicia Chou NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. 202-358-0257 [email protected]

Donna Weaver / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland 410-338-4493 / 410-338-4514 [email protected]  /  [email protected]

Elizabeth Landau Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-6425 [email protected]

Seth Redfield Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 860-685-3669 [email protected]

Related Terms

• Astrophysics
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Hubble Space Telescope

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