Voyager 2 lifts off from Cape Canaveral, bound for Jupiter and beyond

The outer planets had aligned in a pattern that occurs once every 175 years, and NASA had built a mission to take advantage of it. On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan IIIE/Centaur rocket, sixteen days ahead of its twin, Voyager 1. Its path was longer and more circular, built to swing past Jupiter and Saturn before continuing on toward Uranus and Neptune, worlds no spacecraft had approached before. Voyager 1 would take the shorter route and arrive first…