The twin plutonium-powered spacecraft first visited Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 remains the only probe to have made fly-bys of Uranus and Neptune. The mission transformed our view of the solar system and raised the possibility that the conditions to support basic lifeforms may exist beyond Earth – and close enough to investigate.
Highlights have included beaming back the first glimpses of methane oceans on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon; ash-spewing volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons; and a thunderstorm on Saturn. In addition they tracked 1,000 mph winds on the surface of Neptune and discovered five-mile-tall geysers erupting from the icy surface of Neptune’s largest moon, Triton.
“When I started on Voyager my two daughters were young,” Stone recalled in 2012. “By the time they were in college we had passed Saturn and were on our way to Uranus. They got married and the Voyagers just kept going, and we had grandchildren and Voyager just kept going and our grandchildren are now aware of what’s happening to the Voyagers just like our children were.”
By the time Stone retired from the mission in 2022, the Voyager spacecraft had travelled beyond the outer boundary of the heliosphere, the bubble of supersonic charged particles streaming outwards from the sun, and had ventured into interstellar space, where they continue to collect and transmit data to Earth.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
