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Seeing that picture of voyager, I wondered why we aren't sending out more of these in every direction.



The voyager missions took advantage of a rare planetary alignment for massive gravity assists. Their primary mission was investigating Jupiter, Saturn, their moons, a bit of Uranus and Neptune.

There’s not much to investigate going out every direction, the little science they’re still doing is tracking the size of the suns influence, and that will be about the same in any direction.

Another “grand tour” of the solar system during an alignment with modern sensors and cameras would be awesome though


It’s remarkable both that the alignment managed fall in a period in which we had the technology to take advantage of it and that someone recognized the opportunity and acted on it. A slightly different course of history could’ve prevented the Voyager missions from happening, causing the opportunity to be missed.

It’s so hard to imagine. As a 90s kid the photos the Voyagers sent back were prominent in my childhood.


Imagine how good the cameras will be in the 2140s the next time that alignment happens.




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