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The alignment isn't what matters for overtaking Voyager. Jupiter alone is enough, and New Horizons nearly did. Jupiter accounts for the vast majority of any g
by vikingerik 2y ago
The alignment isn't what matters for overtaking Voyager. Jupiter alone is enough, and New Horizons nearly did. Jupiter accounts for the vast majority of any gravity-assist plan. Saturn has 30% the mass and 2/3 of the orbital velocity, so it could only add 20% more over what you get from Jupiter alone, and the ice giants are smaller and slower yet.
- Denvercoder9 2y ago> New Horizons nearly did. New Horizons didn't nearly overtake Voyager. It's currently traveling about 4 km/s slower, and as it's still closer to the Sun, it's also decelerating more.
- vikingerik 2y agoYes, I wrote that short for brevity. If you must have the full thing spelled out: New Horizons nearly got enough velocity at Jupiter to eventually overtake Voyager. 4 km/s is "nearly" in astronomical terms. New Horizons wasn't really trying to optimize for speed at Jupiter (its closest approach was over 10m km), and a spacecraft that did could easily overtake Voyager using Jupiter alone and not need an alignment with Saturn or anything else.