Voyager 2: The 1970s Probe Still Texting Us From Interstellar Space

Built in the 1970s and now over 13 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 2 runs on a tape recorder holding just 64 megabytes yet remains the only object to visit Uranus and Neptune. This episode tells the story of a spacecraft that launched as a backup and became our greatest interplanetary explorer, still sending data from interstellar space in 2026.We explain the rare planetary alignment behind the Grand Tour, why Voyager 2 launched before Voyager 1, and the hydrazine thrusters and plutonium-powered RTGs that keep it alive. We walk through its discoveries, from active volcanoes on Io and a smooth ocean-hiding Europa, to the jammed scan platform at Saturn that engineers fixed with heat, an accident that locked in the trajectory to the ice giants.The sideways planet Uranus and a plasmoid found in old data in 2020The needle-threading Neptune flyby and its violent, internally heated weatherCrossing the heliopause in 2018 and the 2023 interstellar shout that saved the missionThe dying RTGs forcing instruments to shut down one by one through 2030The Golden Record and where the silent probe will drift in tens of thousands of years