Voyager 2

The Voyager 2 spacecraft was launched in 1977. It is identical to its sister Voyager program craft, Voyager 1, but Voyager 2 followed a somewhat different trajectory during its Saturn encounter, bypassing a close encounter with Titan to take advantage of a gravitational slingshot to travel on to Uranus and Neptune. It thus became the first and so far only probe to visit those two planets and the first spacecraft to make the Grand Tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. This was possible only due to a rare geometric arrangement of those four planets that only occurs once every 175 years http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/planetary.html.

Related Topics:
Spacecraft - 1977 - Voyager program - Voyager 1 - Saturn - Titan - Gravitational slingshot - Uranus - Neptune - Grand Tour

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For details on the Voyager instrument packages, see the separate article on the Voyager program.

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