Would there be any advantage to such a route? I know the Voyagers and such have studied the planets along the plane, but wouldn’t the shortest path to a nearby star be a direction away from the plane?
Would there be any advantage to such a route? I know the Voyagers and such have studied the planets along the plane, but wouldn’t the shortest path to a nearby star be a direction away from the plane?
Comments
Every mission we ever sent had the main goal of investigating something on the solar system. So it doesn’t make sense to deviate (too much) from the plane.
In the case we are visiting another system we would have to deviate from it eventually but we may still want to first launch in the same direction as the plane and make use of gravity assist to help accelerating. The same way Voyager did.