Voyager 2 was the first NASA mission to fly past Uranus, reaching the planet in 1986.
The spacecraft made its closest approach to Uranus on January 24, 1986, passing about 81,500 kilometers above the planet’s cloud tops. It discovered new moons and rings, measured Uranus’s magnetic environment, and returned the first close-up images of the planet and its satellites.
Voyager 2’s trajectory was possible because of a rare alignment of the outer planets. After visiting Jupiter and Saturn, mission controllers used Saturn’s gravity to send it onward to Uranus, and later to Neptune in 1989. It remains the only spacecraft to have visited both of those ice giants.
Voyager 1 did visit Jupiter and Saturn, but its trajectory took it northward away from Uranus. Galileo later orbited Jupiter, while Pioneer 10 flew past Jupiter and continued outward without visiting Uranus.