NASA / JPL - Caltech
It was 35 years ago today that NASA's Voyager 2 robotic probe—sailing through space since its launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 20, 1977—flew past the ice giant Neptune to complete its Grand Tour of the Outer Planets in our Solar System.
Voyager 2 visited Jupiter on July 9, 1979; Saturn on August 26, 1981; and Uranus on January 24, 1986...just four days before the space shuttle Challenger disaster.
It was the 1989 flyby of Neptune and its enigmatic moon Triton, which may be a captured Kuiper Belt object, that made me the space fanatic I am today! Well this, and the May 4, 1989 launch (which I watched live on TV) of NASA's Magellan probe to Venus aboard space shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-30.
We could've headed back to Neptune and Triton courtesy of the Trident flyby spacecraft, but NASA rejected this proposal back on June 2, 2021...in favor of two missions to Venus instead. Such a huge disappointment.
L.M. Prockter et al. LPI / JPL / SwRI
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