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A gravity assist, gravity assist maneuver, swing-by, or generally a gravitational slingshot in orbital mechanics, is a type of spaceflight flyby which makes use of the relative movement (e.g. orbit around the Sun) and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically to save propellant and reduce expense.
An orbital spaceflight (or orbital flight) is a spaceflight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. To do this around the Earth, it must be on a free trajectory which has an altitude at perigee (altitude at closest approach) around 80 kilometers (50 mi); this is the boundary of ...
Pioneer 10 – launched in 1972, flew past Jupiter in 1973 and is heading in the direction of Aldebaran (65 light years away) in the constellation of Taurus.Contact was lost in January 2003, and it is estimated to have passed 134 astronomical units (AU; one AU is roughly the average distance between Earth and the Sun: 150 million kilometers (93 million miles)).
Sketch of a circumlunar free return trajectory (not to scale), plotted on the rotating reference frame rotating with the moon. (Moon's motion only shown for clarity) In orbital mechanics, a free-return trajectory is a trajectory of a spacecraft traveling away from a primary body (for example, the Earth) where gravity due to a secondary body (for example, the Moon) causes the spacecraft to ...
Voyager 1 and its twin send back science data continuously through the Deep Space Network, a system of radio antennae on Earth, with about six to eight hours of the probes’ detections returning ...
The space station is whizzing around Earth at about five miles per second (18,000 mph), according to NASA. That means time moves slower for the astronauts relative to people on the surface.
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board.Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in orbit around Earth, but also includes space probes for flights beyond Earth orbit.
The minimum delta-v and the corresponding maximum altitude for a given range can be calculated, d, assuming a spherical Earth of circumference 40 000 km and neglecting the Earth's rotation and atmosphere. Let θ be half the angle that the projectile is to go around the Earth, so in degrees it is 45°×d/ 10 000 km. The minimum-delta-v ...