- The last two spacecraft of NASA’s Mariner series Mariner Jupiter/Saturn A and B, renamed Voyager 1 and 2 were the first in that series to be sent to explore the outer solar system. Preceeded by the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions, Voyager 1 and 2 were to make studies of Jupiter and Saturn, their satellites, and their magnetospheres as well as studies of the interplanetary medium. An option designed into the Voyager 2 trajectory, and ultimately exercised, would direct it toward Uranus and Neptune to perform similar studies.
- Star Tales - Ursa Minor (ianridpath.com)
The Little Bear was said by the Greeks to have been first named by the astronomer Thales of Miletus, who lived from about 625 to 545 BC. The earliest reference to it seems to have been made by the poet Callimachus of the third century BC, who reported that Thales ‘measured out the little stars of the Wain [wagon] by which the Phoenicians sail’. The little bear was evidently unknown to Homer, two centuries before Thales, for he wrote only of the Great Bear, never mentioning its smaller counterpart.