Voyager Missions Launch
NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to explore the outer solar system — they are now the most distant human-made objects, still transmitting from interstellar space.
In 1977, NASA launched twin spacecraft — Voyager 2 on August 20 and Voyager 1 on September 5 — to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs once every 176 years. Voyager 1 visited Jupiter and Saturn; Voyager 2 visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — still the only spacecraft to visit the ice giants. Their discoveries were revolutionary: active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io, a subsurface ocean on Europa, geysers on Neptune's moon Triton. Each spacecraft carries a Golden Record — a phonograph record containing sounds and images of Earth, curated by Carl Sagan's team as a message to any extraterrestrial civilization. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space. As of 2025, both spacecraft continue to transmit data from over 15 billion miles away.
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