The Titan trade-off: Voyager 1's detour that ended planetary flybys

In 1980, a rare outer-planet alignment forced NASA to choose between a close Titan encounter or continuing toward Pluto. They picked Titan, prioritizing a dense-atmosphere moon over a distant Pluto rendezvous, which meant Voyager 1 would never again have a planetary flyby as its path was bent out of the ecliptic. Voyager 2 continued to Uranus and Neptune, while Pluto wasn’t visited until New Horizons in 2015.