When planets align.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Today we salute Dr. Ed Stone, who retired as project scientist after half a century at the helm of the Voyager mission. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ In the late 1970s, a rare planetary alignment occurred, allowing scientists like Stone to chart a course for Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to visit the four giant outer planets using minimal fuel and the gravitational pull of the planets themselves. This lead to scientific discoveries, a new perspective of our place in the cosmos, and the farthest travel of any human-made objects. Both Voyagers are in interstellar space now.⁣ ⁣⁣ As Voyager approached Jupiter, the two spacecraft took more than 33,000 pictures of the gas giant and its four major satellites, leading astronomers to discover volcanoes on Io and that the Great Red Spot is a complex storm. Their next stop was Saturn, which they visited nine months apart, studying the planet's atmospheric composition, wind speeds, and temperature. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Voyager 2 continued its tour of the gas giants, studying Uranus’ geological features and detecting 11 previously unseen moons and two rings. At Neptune, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years earlier, passing by 3,000 miles (4,950 km) above the planet's north pole.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Image descriptions:⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ 1. Storms on Jupiter appear in shades of tan and white, as large swirling patterns with wavy patterns appearing between the circles. Jupiter's Moon Io appears in gold above to the right of the planet.⁣ ⁣⁣ 2. Saturn's rings cut diagonally across the picture, with the planet's striped surface in shades of tan. One of the planet’s moons is shown as a small white dot below the planet.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ 3. Uranus is a light blue sphere, centered on a field of black space.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ 4. Neptune is a royal blue sphere striped with white swirling storms and darker blue bands.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ 5. Ed Stone stands in front of a full-scale model of the Voyager spacecraft, wearing a grey suit and tie, a striped shirt, and glasses. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ 6: Small lines of light extend upward, illuminating half of the expanse of space, the brightest line has a small dot in it, Earth.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Credits: NASA⁣⁣/JPL-Caltech ⁣⁣ #Planets #NASA #Voyager #SolarSystem #JPL