Which planet did Voyager 2 fly by in August 1989?

Which planet did Voyager 2 fly by in August 1989? The answer is Neptune, which Voyager 2 reached on August 25, 1989.

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four giant planets. After encounters with Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981, and Uranus in 1986, it continued along a carefully planned trajectory to Neptune. Its closest approach occurred on August 25, 1989, making it the first—and so far only—spacecraft to visit Neptune.

The encounter transformed Neptune from a distant point of light into a dynamic world. Voyager 2 observed powerful winds, bright cloud features, a dark storm system, rings, and several moons. It also made the first close observations of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, detecting a young surface and active nitrogen geysers.

A common mix-up is Uranus, because Voyager 2 visited that planet only three years earlier. Another is Saturn, which the spacecraft encountered in 1981. Neptune was the final planetary stop in Voyager 2’s original grand tour, after which the mission continued into the outer heliosphere.