40 years ago, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus. To this day, it remains the only spacecraft to ever observe the distant gas giant up close. The encounter began in November 1985 and lasted through February 1986. In all, the spacecraft returned more than 7,000 photographs, revealing 11 new moons, and two new rings orbiting the planet, and a wealth of information for scientists to analyze for years to come. | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

👉The Only Close Visit to Uranus Ever Made On January 24, 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 made history by becoming the first—and still the only—spacecraft to fly past Uranus. After traveling through the outer solar system for nine years, it passed just 81,500 kilometers above the planet’s cloud tops, giving humanity its first close look at this distant ice giant. Before Voyager 2’s arrival, Uranus appeared as little more than a blue-green dot through telescopes on Earth. That brief flyby changed everythi