Spacecraft · tracked live
Voyager 2
The only spacecraft to have visited all four giant planets, using an alignment that comes round once in 175 years: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 - the only close look anybody has ever had at the last two. It crossed into interstellar space in 2018, on a course far south of the plane of the planets.
- Agency
- NASA
- Launched
- 1977-08-20 - still working
- From the Sun
- 21,570,971,392 km (+1,299,982 km/d)
- From the Earth
- 21,569,343,385 km (+3,318,197 km/d)
- A signal takes
- 19 h 59 m
- Travelling at
- 15.3 km/s
Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of the date below, changing at the rate beside each.
Path
Open as well, and steeper. Neptune bent it south in 1989, so it leaves the Solar System about 48° below the plane of the planets at some 15 km/s.
Along the way
- Closest to Jupiter
- Closest to Saturn
- The only close look anyone has had at Uranus
- The only close look anyone has had at Neptune
- Crossed the heliopause, six years after its twin
Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.