Everything about The Planetary Grand Tour totally explained
The
Planetary Grand Tour was an ambitious plan to send unmanned probes to the outermost planets of the solar system. Conceived by
Gary Flandro of the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Grand Tour would have exploited the alignment of
Jupiter,
Saturn,
Uranus,
Neptune, and
Pluto, an event that would occur in the late 1970s, and not recur for 176 years. A probe sent to Jupiter could use that planet as a
gravitational slingshot to extend its trajectory to planets further out in the Solar System.
The original proposed mission design had four probes. The first two, launched in 1976 and 1977, would fly by
Jupiter,
Saturn, and
Pluto. The other two, launched in 1979, would fly by
Jupiter,
Uranus, and
Neptune.
The vehicles were to have been designed with multiple redundant systems to ensure reliability over missions lasting up to 12 years.
NASA budget cuts eventually doomed the Grand Tour missions in 1972, as well as later proposals for a "mini grand tour". However, many elements of the Grand Tour were added to the
Voyager program. The two Voyager probes, launched in 1977, was originally meant to fly by
Jupiter and
Saturn. But
Voyager 2 used the fortunate alignments of the outer planets and was able to add close flybys of both Uranus and
Neptune.
Voyager 2's mission has specifically come to be regarded as the "Grand Tour."
Voyager 1 could have been sent to Pluto after Saturn, but was instead sent on a trajectory which brought it close by
Titan, eliminating Pluto. Voyager 2's trajectory couldn't be bent to bring the probe by Pluto after the Neptune flyby in 1989.
Pluto, no longer regarded as a planet after the
2006 redefinition, is scheduled for exploration by the
New Horizons spacecraft set to rendezvous with the
dwarf planet and its three moons in 2015.
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