Voyager 1 explored only Jupiter and Saturn, and theoretically could have been sent to visit Pluto.
Voyager 2 did the Grand Tour, and explored all the giant planets, and may or may not have been easy to swing it to Pluto, as at the time of the Neptune flyby, Pluto was inside the orbit of Neptune, and would have had to backtrack, so to speak.
The GQ: If it had been decided that Voyager 1 were to make a Pluto flyby, when would it have arrived? If they were on opposite sides of the Solar System, for example, New Horizons may well have arrived first anyway.
The condition for making it feasible is a lot tougher than just “not on opposite sides of the Sun”. At those distances, even being at slightly different places in their orbits means a huge separation.
At any rate, Pluto was known long before the Voyagers were ever planned. If they could have visited Pluto, they would have.
The statement is still true, because at the time that the Voyagers didn’t visit it, Pluto was classified as an outer planet and the sentence is past tense.
This ain’t a debate about whether Pluto is/was/should be classified as a ‘planet’, and has nothing to do with what I was asking, if anyone should care to read the OP.
Er … no … that came from my citation above “Both Voyagers flew beyond the orbit of Pluto/Neptune in 1989 …”
If you’re interested, I’d be happy to help you calculate all this out over the weekend … it’s just rocket science … not like fluid mechanics or anything hard.
Uh, yeah. But crossing the orbit is irrelevant if the planet is not fortuitously placed where you’re crossing it. In this case, Voyager 1 would have made the Pluto flyby six years after leaving Saturn. Voyager 2 took nine years to reach Neptune with an assist from Uranus.