On August 20 1977, 45 years ago, an extraordinary spacecraft left this planet on a journey like no other. Voyager 2 was going to show us, for the first time, what the outer solar system planets looked like close-up. It was like sending a fly to New York City and asking it to report back.

Voyager 1 was launched after Voyager 2, on September 5. Attached to the flank of each Voyager was a Golden Record carrying greetings, sounds, images and music from Earth.

The spacecraft were more or less twins, but they had different trajectories and scientific instruments. While both flew by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 then sped onwards to interstellar space. Voyager 2 tarried to make the only visit ever to the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.

With NASA's first Artemis mission to the moon set to launch before the end of the month, teams are gearing up for future missions with astronauts including just exactly where the next people to set foot on the moon will be leaving their footprints.

NASA has announced a news conference for 2 p.m. Friday to reveal potential landing locations for the Artemis III mission, which is still targeting a launch in 2025, but not before the uncrewed Artemis I flight slated to launch on Aug. 29 and a crewed Artemis II flight in 2024 that will send humans back to the moon, but not only to orbit it.

Artemis III would mark humans' return to the surface for the first time since Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt left the surface on Dec. 14, 1972.

The Apollo program managed six landings with two humans each for a total of 12 to walk on the moon between 1969-1972.