What is a gravitational assist maneuver or slingshot and how does it work? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique ...

This artist’s concept shows an example of a gravitational assist maneuver, used by spacecraft to travel through the solar system. In this example, the spacecraft flies close by Mars, then by Jupiter, ...

A spacecraft that left Earth one year ago has returned to pay us a visit. OSIRIS-REx—the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer—is currently hurtling ...

NASA's Lucy spacecraft is set to slingshot around the Earth very soon. The space probe, which is destined to explore the Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter, will complete the slingshot on the first ...

On Friday, an interplanetary spacecraft will slingshot around Earth in the super early morning hours. The spacecraft, a joint European and Japanese creation, will use our planet’s gravity to brake its ...

On 19–20 August 2024, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will achieve a world first: using the gravity of the Moon and then Earth to bend its path through space, bringing it one step closer to ...

After launching a pair of satellites last year that failed to reach the right orbit around the moon, China's Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization (CSU) came up with a novel tactic — ...

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft launched in 2021 and will eventually make it to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids where it’ll explore the rocky location for clues on how our solar system formed. Its journey to get ...

In this episode of my live Q&BA chat session, I answered a question about how “gravity slingshots” work. This is the process of using the gravity of a planet to accelerate (or decelerate) space probes ...

For the past year, NASA's OSIRIS-REx satellite has been on a solar orbit in our galaxy, readying itself for its ultimate goal of heading out to the asteroid Bennu, surveying it, and grabbing a sample ...

Sometimes we all need a good kick in the butt to get us where we need to go—but perhaps you weren't expecting NASA to apply the same philosophy to a spacecraft. Yet that's precisely what's happening ...

In 1915, Einstein proposed that gravity actually distorts the fabric of space. His calculations perfectly explained certain astronomical observations that Newtonian physics could not account for – ...