NASA Launches the Voyager Interstellar Probes

Date

1977

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Global

Era

Contemporary

Significance

NASA launched Voyager 2 on 20 August 1977 and Voyager 1 on 5 September 1977 to exploit a rare planetary alignment that occurs only about once every 176 years, enabling a "Grand Tour" of the outer solar system.

Using gravity-assist maneuvers, the twin probes swept past Jupiter and Saturn, reaching Jupiter in 1979, and Voyager 2 went on to become the only spacecraft ever to visit Uranus and Neptune. Between them they surveyed all four giant planets, dozens of moons, and intricate ring and magnetic-field systems, revolutionising planetary science with discoveries like active volcanoes on Io. Each carried a gold-plated Golden Record encoding sounds and images of Earth, a message to any civilisation that might one day find it. Decades later, both probes crossed into interstellar space, becoming the most distant human-made objects and still transmitting data. The Voyager missions stand as landmark achievements in exploration and among humanity's most enduring emissaries to the cosmos.

Empires active in 1977

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE to 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE to 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE to 1999 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE to 1992 CE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Global eradication of smallpox declared
  8 May 1980 (last natural case 1977)
• Release of ChatGPT and the rise of generative AI
  30 November 2022
• HAART Turns The Tide On AIDS
  1996
• Completion of the Human Genome Project
  14 April 2003
• The collapse in solar and wind costs and the energy transition
  2010s-2020s
• CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing
  June 2012

Essential reading

• Soweto Uprising Galvanises Anti-Apartheid Struggle
  1976
• Apollo 11 Moon landing
  20 July 1969 (mission 16 to 24 July 1969)
• Containerisation begins: SS Ideal X first container voyage
  26 April 1956
• Castle Bravo Test and the Nuclearisation of the Pacific
  1 March 1954

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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