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Montage of planets and some moons that the two Voyager spacecraft have visited and studied. It is the only program that visited all four outer planets. A total of nine spacecraft have been launched on missions that involve visits to the outer planets; all nine missions involve encounters with Jupiter, with four spacecraft also visiting Saturn.
Saturn 5 August 1981 1447 days (3 yr, 11 mo, 17 d) Voyager 2 flew by Saturn. Uranus 24 January 1986 3080 days (8 yr, 5 mo, 5 d) Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and was the first spacecraft to visit it. Neptune 25 August 1989 4389 days (12 yr, 6 days) Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and was the first spacecraft to visit it. Voyager 1: Jupiter 5 September 1977
Artist's concept of Cassini 's orbit insertion around Saturn. The exploration of Saturn has been solely performed by crewless probes. Three missions were flybys, which formed an extended foundation of knowledge about the system. The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft, launched in 1997, was in orbit from 2004 to 2017. [1] [2]
previously visited Jupiter, went on to visit Uranus and Neptune 1977-076A: Cassini: NASA/ ESA/ ASI: 1 July 2004 – 15 September 2017 orbiter success also performed flybys of a number of Saturn's moons, and deployed the Huygens Titan lander; first spacecraft to orbit Saturn 1997-061A
Cassini 's end involved a series of close Saturn passes, approaching within the rings, then an entry into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017, to destroy the spacecraft. [ 6 ] [ 12 ] [ 88 ] This method was chosen to ensure protection and prevent biological contamination to any of the moons of Saturn thought to offer potential habitability .
The spacecrafts were then moved into a separate program named Mariner Jupiter-Saturn (also Mariner Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus, [19] MJS, or MJSU), part of the Mariner program, later renamed because it was thought that the design of the two space probes had progressed sufficiently beyond that of the Mariner family to merit a separate name.
The gravitational assist trajectories at Jupiter were successfully carried out by both Voyagers, and the two spacecraft went on to visit Saturn and its system of moons and rings. Voyager 1 encountered Saturn in November 1980, with the closest approach on November 12, 1980, when the space probe came within 124,000 kilometres (77,000 mi) of ...
It included a Saturn orbiter and an atmospheric probe/lander for the moon Titan, although it also returned data on a wide variety of other things including the Heliosphere, Jupiter, and relativity tests. The Titan probe, Huygens, entered and landed on Titan in 2005. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter orbit.