The Voyager probes
Two spacecraft tour the outer planets and keep going into interstellar space.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Launched in 1977 to exploit a planetary alignment occurring once in 175 years, the Voyagers return the first detailed images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, discovering volcanoes on Io and a possible ocean on Europa. Voyager 1 turned to photograph Earth as a pale blue dot in 1990 at Carl Sagan's urging. Both crossed into interstellar space and are still transmitting, nearly fifty years on.