Voyager Visits Uranus and Observes Rings and Moons

Last January, having survived the hazards of interplanetary space, previous close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn, four Administrations and numerous budget cycles, Voyager 2 passed within 107 000 kilometers of the planet Uranus. The data collected on its historic flyby took 2 hours and 45 minutes to reach radiotelescopes on Earth, 2.8 billion kilometers away. And while the aptly named Voyager coasts off to an encounter with Neptune and its large moon Triton in August of 1989, the Voyager scientists will be busy analyzing their precious data for clues to the origin and evolution of the Uranian system. In January of 1987 the world’s scientific community will be granted full access to the Voyager 2 Uranus data. Until then they will have to be satisfied with the Voyager team’s preliminary conclusions, which were published last month.

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