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The Voyager 2 probe was launched on August 20, 1977, by NASA from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Titan IIIE/Centaur launch vehicle. Two weeks later, the twin Voyager 1 probe was launched on September 5, 1977.
Voyager 2 has three radioisotope thermoelectric generators that power the spacecraft by converting heat emitted by the decaying plutonium into electricity.
The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment to explore the two gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and potentially also the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune - to fly near them while collecting data for ...
Voyager 2 is now floating on its own, almost 20 billion kilometres from Earth. Nasa still hopes to be able to re-establish contact with the probe, however. It is programmed to automatically reset ...
NASA sent a radio signal to Voyager 2, located billions of miles away in interstellar space, and restored communications with the spacecraft after an errant command caused a blackout.
After the cancellation, the "Voyager" name was recycled for the Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 probes to the outer planets, with the latter probe, Voyager 2 (Mariner 12), completing another ambitious post-Apollo project, the "Grand Tour". The Saturn V had also been planned at one point as the launch vehicle for an upscaled probe for this mission. [4]
Voyager 2 trails its twin in interstellar space at more than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from Earth. At that distance, it takes more than 18 hours for a signal to travel one way.
Several space probes and the upper stages of their launch vehicles are leaving the Solar System, all of which were launched by NASA. Three of the probes, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons, are still functioning and are regularly contacted by radio communication, while Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 are now derelict.