Uranus Has Only Been Visited Once

In the entire history of space travel, one of the interesting facts about Uranus is, only one spacecraft has ever come quite close to Uranus. On January 24th, 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus, passing just 81,000 kilometers from the planet's cloud tops. The gas/ice giant and its moons were captured in tens of thousands of pictures before the spacecraft accelerated toward its next destination, Neptune.

There are no present plans to launch any more spacecraft toward Uranus, and none have ever been. During a mission extension planning phase in 2009, the prospect of transporting the Cassini spacecraft from Saturn to Uranus was considered. The Uranian system would have taken Cassini around 20 years to reach after leaving Saturn, therefore this never materialized. Although there are a number of ideas being thought about, none have yet been approved.