Why Didn't Voyager Visit Pluto?

Flash Modin writes: NASA built the twin Voyager spacecraft for a rare planetary alignment that put Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune within reach at once. Originally, Voyager 1 was programmed to see Pluto in 1986, but managers targeted Saturn's planet-like moon Titan instead. That choice made Pluto impossible by vaulting Voyager 1 from the orbital plane. Interestingly, Voyager 2, which couldn't reach Pluto, made the case for New Horizons by revealing Neptune's moon Triton as a kidnapped Pluto. "I'm very glad that they chose not to go to Pluto in 1986," says New Horizons head Alan Stern. "We'll do a better job at Pluto with modern instruments than they would have, and they did a much better job at Saturn..."

Comments

The real reason

[gvanbelle]

I had the opportunity to ask Ed Stone, the JPL Director & Voyager scientist, this question. His rather glib answer was, "well, Titan was 3 hours away, and Pluto was 3 years away - and I had to make payroll." I think the broader answer is that JPL assumed they'd get another mission funded if they simply skipped it (and they almost did).

Re:Because titan has ice, pluto isn't even a plane

[mister_playboy]

Technically the Pluto-Charon system is not a primary with a satellite, but a double system. The center of mass of the system is not within either body, but in the space between them. .

As I love to point out, the problem with this definition is that it also applies to the Sun-Jupiter system.