Video: 'What Did Voyager 2 See During its Journey Out Of The Solar System? 1977-2019 (4k UHD)' (Aug. 25, 1981, at 3:07)

(Tuesday, August 25, 1981, Voyager’s closest approach to Saturn came at 11:24:05 p.m. EDT) — Sweeping out of the interplanetary darkness and over the sparkling lights of Saturn’s rings, Voyager 2 kept its rendezvous tonight with the giant planet and its retinue of moons and sent back data and pictures of worlds as perplexing as they are dazzling.

The American spacecraft photographed four of the moons in greater detail than before, attempted to count and measure the thousands of discrete strands in the Saturnian rings and then plunged within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s stormy yellowish-brown clouds.

Video: 'VOYAGER 2 - Saturn - TV coverage (1981/08/25) [60fps]'

It was a dramatic and melancholy moment of hail and farewell: hail to the Sun’s most elegant planet for the third time in three years and farewell to American planetary exploration for at least five years.

Voyager 2, as it leaves Saturn, will be heading for a planned visit to Uranus in January 1986, which as matters stand now will be the next planetary encounter for earthborn craft.