Launched in the summer of 1977, NASA’s Voyager mission to explore the outer planets transformed humanity’s understanding of the solar system with its pioneering tech and ambitious goals.
The identical spacecraft were the first and only human-made objects to reach interstellar space—Voyager 1 doing so in 2012 and Voyager 2 in 2018—after capturing breathtaking images and critical measurements that deepened our knowledge of the solar system.
Spacecraft Tech
NASA’s engineers built the Voyagers with an impressive capacity for longevity despite Congress initially approving a mission to explore just two planets within a five-year timeline. The mission’s early success expanded the mission to four planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—as well as 48 moons.
Launched using expendable Titan-Centaur rockets, each probe has a suite of instruments designed to observe and measure the composition of planetary bodies. They are equipped with both infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, wide- and narrow-angle cameras, and instruments to measure magnetic fields, solar wind particles, and cosmic rays. A high-gain antenna sends data back to Earth.
NASA communicates with the Voyager twins using the Deep Space Network, an international array of ultrasensitive giant radio antennas that can send data to the probes in just under 24 hours. In April 2024, the DSN allowed engineers to fix a glitch in Voyager 1’s code that had it sending gibberish back to Earth for months.
Discoveries
Swinging from planet to planet, using the gravity of each body to propel them to their next destination, the probes took turns providing unexpected discoveries. Their instruments revealed:
Active volcanism on Jupiter’s moon Io, the first observed elsewhere in our solar system.
The first nitrogen-rich atmosphere found beyond Earth on Saturn’s moon, Titan, indicating potentially habitable conditions.
Eleven new moons and two new rings around Uranus in the first-ever visit to the planet.
"The Great Dark Spot," a counterclockwise rotating storm about the size of Earth in Neptune’s southern hemisphere
Mission Extension
In 1965, NASA scientists discovered a rare, fuel-saving alignment of the outer planets that happens roughly once every 175 years, enabling NASA to extend the mission. The agency sent Voyager 2 on to Uranus and Neptune while Voyager 1 traveled toward the edge of the solar system.
In 1989, NASA seized the opportunity to study space beyond the sun’s influence or its heliosheath—the solar system’s outer layer of solar wind.
Nonessential systems were shut down to help reach the interstellar boundary, starting with the cameras. The last photos ever taken by a Voyager probe were captured in 1990 at the request of Carl Sagan, a Voyager imaging scientist at the time. The resulting mosaic of more than 60 images includes the famous "Pale Blue Dot" and would come to be known as our solar system’s family portrait.
And Beyond
Both probes carry a copy of the Golden Record, a message to the stars that attempts to condense humanity’s culture into a phonograph record. Each record comes with instructions on how to play it, a variety of music, sounds from Earth, and greetings in 55 languages.
NASA’s scientists continue to maintain the two spacecraft well beyond their expected operational lifetime. The probes are expected to run out of power in the 2030s.
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How we communicate with spacecraft millions of miles away
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Through NASA’s Deep Space Network—a global system of antennas in California, Spain, and Australia. These 230-foot dishes detect faint signals, like a light bulb’s power, from billions of miles away, enabling discoveries about exoplanets, black holes, and more.
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Dive Deeper
Relevant articles, podcasts, videos, and more from around the internet — curated and summarized by our team
While the Voyager spacecraft sent valuable information back to Earth, they may yet convey important information to another world. The gold-plated records aboard each probe hold a glimpse of humanity–songs, greetings, even digital images–and extend a message of peace and friendship to whoever finds them. But what if that’s not the point? Hosted by Bill Nye, this video reminds us of our duty to treat each other with kindness.
Voyager 1 and 2 have crossed the boundary into interstellar space. But how far away is that? This landing page has all the answers–elapsed mission time, their distance from Earth and the Sun, relative speed, and even distance away in light-time. Click on ‘Learn More’ beneath the ‘Mission Status’ table to get a near real-time 3D look at where the probes are relative to the solar system.
Spanning back to the Pioneer and Voyager missions, Jupiter’s moon Europa has been a top prospect for life outside our own planet. The detection of carbon dioxide on its icy surface by the James Webb telescope has brought the question closer to reality. What might be hiding down there in its vast ocean, waiting to be discovered? This video uses Earth’s own Marianas Trench as a potential model for what we might find lurking below Europa’s surface.
Even if they are from the 1970s and 80s, the pictures and videos that the Voyager probes returned to Earth are stunning. Many of them are pictures of planetary bodies and moons that had never been seen before. Neptune’s Great Dark Spot? Our solar system’s family portrait? The famous Pale Blue Dot? See them all here–the images that inspired many more missions to the cosmos and the imaginations of the American public.
40 years after launch, the team behind the Voyager missions has aged, and so have the spacecraft. Treating the probes now like ‘aging parents’, the engineers that built them recall the bright-eyed, determined, and even rebellious character of their colleagues that allowed a five-year mission to last much longer. While some of them will see Voyager’s end, others will go before it.
In 1977, the US launched two probes to journey out to document the outer solar system as well as interstellar space beyond it. Known as Voyager 1 and 2, the probes have provided the first glimpse into these areas, and both continue after five decades. Contained within each is a so-called "golden record" collecting archetypal sounds of life on earth. This brilliant 15-minute video combines animation, archival images, and a lush operatic score to tell the story of the Voyager probes like never before.
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