24 Facts About Voyager 2

Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice giant planets.

Voyager 2 was the fourth of five spacecraft to achieve Solar escape velocity, which allowed it to leave the Solar System.

Voyager 2 successfully fulfilled its primary mission of visiting the Jovian system in 1979, the Saturnian system in 1981, Uranian system in 1986, and the Neptunian system in 1989.

Voyager 2 has left the Sun's heliosphere and is traveling through the interstellar medium, a region of outer space beyond the influence of the Solar System, joining Voyager 1, which had reached the interstellar medium in 2012.

Voyager 2 has begun to provide the first direct measurements of the density and temperature of the interstellar plasma.

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Voyager 2 remains in contact with Earth through the NASA Deep Space Network.

Primary mission of Voyager 2 1 was to explore Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's moon, Titan.

Voyager 2 was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, but on a trajectory that would have the option of continuing on to Uranus and Neptune, or being redirected to Titan as a backup for Voyager 1.

Voyager 2 is equipped with 3 Multihundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generators .

However, Voyager 1 reached both Jupiter and Saturn sooner, as Voyager 2 had been launched into a longer, more circular trajectory.

For each subsequent transmission to Voyager 2, it was necessary for engineers to calculate the specific frequency for the signal so that it could be received by the spacecraft.

Voyager 2 returned images of Jupiter, as well as its moons Amalthea, Io, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa.

Closer high-resolution photos from Voyager 2 were puzzling: the features lacked topographic relief, and one scientist said they "might have been painted on with a felt marker".

The mission's engineers were able to fix the problem, and the Voyager 2 probe was given the go-ahead to explore the Uranian system.

Voyager 2 discovered 11 previously unknown moons: Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck and Perdita.

When Voyager 2 visited Uranus, much of its cloud features were hidden by a layer of haze; however, false-color and contrast-enhanced images show bands of concentric clouds around its south pole.

Voyager 2 discovered previously unknown Neptunian rings, and confirmed six new moons: Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Proteus, Naiad and Thalassa.

Once its planetary mission was over, Voyager 2 was described as working on an interstellar mission, which NASA is using to find out what the Solar System is like beyond the heliosphere.

Voyager 2 is currently transmitting scientific data at about 160 bits per second.

In 1992, Voyager 2 observed the nova V1974 Cygni in the far-ultraviolet.

Voyager 2 failed to detect anything, with calculations showing that the fireballs were just below the craft's limit of detection.

Voyager 2 is heading in the direction of the constellation Telescopium.

In 2013, Voyager 2 1 was escaping the Solar System at a speed of about 3.

In 2023, Voyager 2 is expected to pass Pioneer 10 to become the second furthest spacecraft from the Sun at a distance of around 12.