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Jake Blocker's excellent answer to How does one dogleg from Florida to a sun-synchronous orbit? explains what a dogleg maneuver is, what it's for, what it looks like, and even what a real dog's leg looks like for comparison!

A dogleg maneuver is done to change the inclination of a certain payload, and the reason it limits the payload capacity is most likely due to the cosine losses.

In my answer to it I mention an incident which might be the reason that doglegging to orbit was invented, but I don't know. I also describe it in this answer to History of multiple-payload launches?

Question: Which launch was the first to dogleg?

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    $\begingroup$ ...intentionally? ;) $\endgroup$
    – SF.
    Jun 5 '18 at 14:21
  • $\begingroup$ @SF. ha! Yes let's say a planned trajectory $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Jun 5 '18 at 14:25
  • $\begingroup$ Could this be it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor-Ablestar $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Jun 6 '18 at 1:22
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    $\begingroup$ I think, ISRO mostly uses dogleg maneuver $\endgroup$
    – Amar
    Sep 8 '18 at 13:59
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    $\begingroup$ Sputnik 2 had four... (sorry!) $\endgroup$
    – GordonD
    Aug 10 at 17:18

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