Happy anniversary, Voyager 2: NASA celebrates spacecraft's legacy 35 years on!

An image of Saturn captured by Voyager 2 (Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

New Delhi: On August 25, 1981, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Saturn and got an up, close and personal insight into the magnificent planet.

To the scientists' delight, NASA's twin spacecrafts Voyager and Voyager 2 delivered phenomenal discoveries about Saturn.

Today, August 25, 2016, marks the fly-by's 35th anniversary and American space agency NASA is celebrating its legacy.

A year later after the Voyagers revealed the amazing discoveries, it was decided upon another mission that would carry on the legacy at Saturn. The mission we today know as Cassini, has been conducting probes on Saturn and its system since 2004.

Cassini has followed up on many of Voyager's discoveries, and has deepened our understanding of what some might call a "mini solar system."

As per NASA, "Saturn, like all of the planets the Voyagers visited, was full of exciting discoveries and surprises," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "By giving us unprecedented views of the Saturn system, Voyager gave us plenty of reasons to go back for a closer look."

Voyager's Saturn flybys provided a thrilling look at the planet's moons -- a diverse menagerie of worlds, each with unique character and charm. Voyager's images transformed the moons from points of light to fully realized places. Dramatic landscapes on Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus and other moons tantalized scientists with features hinting at tortured pasts, NASA reported.