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The first spacecraft to explore Jupiter was Pioneer 10, which flew past the planet in December 1973, followed by Pioneer 11 twelve months later. Pioneer 10 obtained the first close-up images of Jupiter and its Galilean moons; the spacecraft studied the planet's atmosphere, detected its magnetic field, observed its radiation belts and determined ...
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 5 March 1979 547 days (1 yr, 6 mo, 1 d) Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and returned the first detailed images. [94] Saturn 12 ...
Held the record for fastest human-made object at the time and the most distant one until Voyager 1 overtook in 1998. Closest approach towards Jupiter was at 02:25 UTC on 4 December 1973. Flew by Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io at long distances. Final signal received on 23 January 2003, 12 billion km (80 AU; 7.5 billion mi) from Earth. [5] 2
The nearest star is 4.2 light-years away, and at 15.341 km/s, the spacecraft travels one light-year in about 19,541 years - during which time the nearby stars will also move substantially. In roughly 42,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass the star Ross 248 (10.30 light-years away from Earth) at a distance of 1.7 light-years. [ 94 ]
Pioneer 10 – launched in 1972, flew past Jupiter in 1973 and is heading in the direction of Aldebaran (65 light years away) in the constellation of Taurus.Contact was lost in January 2003, and it is estimated to have passed 134 astronomical units (AU; one AU is roughly the average distance between Earth and the Sun: 150 million kilometers (93 million miles)).
On 25 August, in Voyager 2 's last planetary encounter, the spacecraft swooped only 4,950 km (3,080 mi) above Neptune's north pole, the closest approach it had made to any body since it left Earth in 1977. At that time, Neptune was the farthest known body in the Solar System.
NASA's Juno spacecraft recently flew by Jupiter, collecting crucial data -- and the best look we've gotten at the planet in a very long time. This is the closest photo of Jupiter anyone has seen ...
The spacecraft flew by Earth twice; the first time at a range of 960 km (600 mi) at 20:34:34 UTC on December 8, 1990. [82] This was 8 km (5 mi) higher than predicted, and the time of the closest approach was within a second of the prediction. It was the first time that a deep space probe had returned to Earth from interplanetary space. [62]