In 1980 NASA had to choose between sending Voyager 1 past Titan or keeping it on a course that could reach Pluto, and it picked Titan, ending the mission's planet-hopping for good — the flyby flung the probe out of the plane of the planets, and it never made another planetary encounter

In 1980 NASA had to choose between sending Voyager 1 past Titan or keeping it on a course that could reach Pluto, and it picked Titan, ending the mission's planet-hopping for good — the flyby flung the probe out of the plane of the planets, and it never made another planetary encounter

Voyager 1 is the most famous planet-hopper we have ever built but the thing most people don’t know is that it stopped hopping on purpose. Not because it broke. In 1980, the people running the mission made a deliberate choice to spend the spacecraft’s planetary future on a single moon, knowing it would close the door on Pluto. The moon was Titan and the price of a close look was that Voyager 1 would never fly past another world again. The choice …