Artist's impression of one of the two Voyager spacecraft during its encounter with the planet Saturn. The broad white line shows the spacecraft's path through the solar system from Earth, via Jupiter, to Saturn. Also visible are (from left to right) Mars, the Sun, Mercury and Venus. Voyager 1 was launched on 5th September 1977 and flew past Saturn on 12th November 1980. Its sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, launched earlier on 20th August 1977, encountered Saturn several months after Voyager 1 in August 1981. Both spacecraft returned valuable information on Saturn and it's ring system and satellites.