The Grand Tour, A proposal that ended with Voyager 1 & 2 |
The Grand Tour, A proposal that ended with Voyager 1 & 2 |
Guest_Myran_* |
Aug 21 2005, 06:37 PM
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Guests |
Seeing descriptions and even images of old projects that never did get underway, my memory was stimulated into remember 'The grand tour' plans.
Back in the 1960 the proposal was to fly no less than 4 spacecrafts, each with atmospheric probes for the four gas giants and one even with a flyby of Pluto after swinging past Jupiter and Uranus. The proposal for this project did fare the same way as many other ambitious plans, that of limited funding but it was skillfuly advocated and eventually ended up with the dual Voyagers (which btw originally only was planned for flyby's of Jupiter and Saturn). Regardless, if anyone remember some tidbits or even sits on more specific information I would be happy to have my memory refreshed. Thank you in advance! |
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Aug 22 2005, 08:41 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
The vehicle for grand tour was for a while at least known as "TOPS": The Outer Planets Spacecraft. Bruce: There was a substantial article in either Space Aeronautics or Astronautics and Aeronautics on the proposed mission in the 1970-71 time frame. I can't get at my brother's copies now to find and ID it.
The de-scoping of the mission also had the effect of descoping the instruments to Mariner Jupiter Saturn requirements. Their sensativities in many respects at Uranus / Neptune were crummy compared to what would have been flown <bigger apertures, etc> on TOPS. The real loss, of course, was the third spacecraft. We, also of course, were lucky. Both Voyagers survived their primary mission and into extended missions. If Voyager 1 had failed to do it's required science at Titan and the critical ring radio occultations, Voyager 2 would have recovered those observations and there would have been no Uranus-Neptune mission. |
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