... On January 24, 1986. the aging but still active Voyager 2 spacecraft will become the first mission to fly by the seventh planet in our solar system. a giant, bluish-green, and often puzzling world called Uranus. ... In 1977 a team of astronomers led by James Elliot of MIT discovered an extremely faint system of rings encircling Uranus. ... By contrast, Saturn's main ring system is 70,000 km wide and some of its outer rings stretch another 100,000 km farther from the planet. ... next page >> . ...