Science / Medicine : Voyager 2 Changes Course

The Voyager 2 spacecraft, flying through space 2.6 billion miles from Earth, fired its thrusters Friday to change course for its August, 1989, picture-taking encounter with the planet Neptune, NASA said.

“Responding to radio signals radioed from Earth, Voyager 2 fired its hydrazine thrusters for three minutes and 29 seconds beginning at 6:55 a.m. PST,” said a statement issued by the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Flight engineering manager Lanny Miller said radio signals sent to Earth by the space probe indicated the maneuver succeeded.

The pre-planned course correction will bring Voyager 2 about 6,200 miles closer to the solar system’s eighth planet, but another major maneuver next April and several subsequent but minor trajectory changes will be required before the Neptune flyby, said laboratory spokeswoman Mary Beth Murrill.

The spacecraft--which passed by Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981 and Uranus in 1986--is scheduled to sweep within 3,000 miles of Neptune’s cloud tops at 9 p.m. PDT next Aug. 24, taking pictures with its television camera. Five hours later, it will fly within 24,000 miles of Neptune’s moon Triton, which scientists believe may have lakes of liquid nitrogen.