The Moon landing was the biggie, but there are other space anniversaries worth noting this year.
It’s exactly 30 years – 25 August 1989 – since NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune, giving humanity its first good look at our solar system’s eighth planet. No other spacecraft has visited since.
This picture was produced from the last whole planet images taken through the green and orange filters on the Voyager 2 narrow angle camera.
The conclusion of the flyby marked the beginning of the Voyager Interstellar Mission, which continues today.
At the time of the Neptune encounter, Voyager 2 was about 4.7 billion kilometres from Earth; today it is 18 billion kilometres from us. The faster-moving Voyager 1 is 21 billion kilometres away.
