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We're lucky that Voyager made it there in the first place. At one point Congress killed the Grand Tour idea in favor of a Jupiter-Saturn flyby. However manageme
by sehugg 14y ago
We're lucky that Voyager made it there in the first place. At one point Congress killed the Grand Tour idea in favor of a Jupiter-Saturn flyby. However management responded by adding piecemeal upgrades like a bigger power source and reprogrammable computer that would allow the Grand Tour idea to proceed. http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter11.html http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter11.html
- planetguy 14y agoThough perhaps if they had killed the Grand Tour then we might have sent an orbital probe to Uranus or Neptune by now, and we might know a lot more about them. We have literally hours of direct observation on both these planets put together -- there's some really interesting data and it would be fantastic to get back there and do some better observations, because at present we know sod-all about them. Unfortunately, a probe to Uranus is still a fairly low priority for NASA. I think the worry is that we'd be spending a billion dollars on funding obvious toilet humor.