On this day · archive
Voyager 2 begins the long outward journey
NASA launched Voyager 2 on August 20, 1977. The spacecraft began a patient route through the outer solar system, carrying human instruments toward worlds no probe had visited closely.
8
events in todayish file
1977
Voyager 2 launches toward the outer planets.
A rare planetary alignment offered a route outward, and a compact spacecraft began the journey with cameras, sensors, and decades ahead of it.
Voyager 2 began with a launch and a long timetable. Its destination was not one world but a sequence of outer planets, reached through carefully planned gravitational assists.
The spacecraft carried instruments built for close observation into regions known largely from telescopes. Each encounter would convert distant points of light into weather, rings, moons, magnetic fields, and measured terrain.
August 20 marks the first upward motion of an expedition whose scale exceeded an ordinary career. The launch lasted minutes; the mission would keep extending the map for decades.
The full record
8 entries from the day’s archive, filed year by year with a note on what each one leaves behind.
A suicide bomber attacks a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep, Turkey, killing 54 people.
The bombing turned a family celebration into one of the city’s deadliest nights.
Violence
A day of exceptional rain triggers landslides in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, killing 72 people.
The disaster devastated hillside neighborhoods and exposed the danger of saturated slopes.
Disaster
A prison riot in Caracas, Venezuela, kills at least 20 people.
The deaths underscored dangerous conditions and weak state control inside the prison system.
Violence
Estonia declares the re-establishment of independence on the legal continuity of its pre-occupation statehood.
The decision restored the republic as Soviet rule was collapsing.
Independence
NASA launches Voyager 2 on its journey through the outer solar system.
The spacecraft began a mission that would extend humanity’s close view of the giant planets.
Space
NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
The mission set out to orbit Mars and place a working lander on its surface.
Space
Japan’s public broadcaster, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, is established.
NHK created a national public-broadcasting institution for radio and, later, television.
Media
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture premieres in Moscow.
The orchestral work entered the repertory with bells, brass, and an unusually expansive sense of public occasion.
Music