Sending a space probe past a planet or dwarf planet
Plot of Mariner 10 flyby of planet Venus in February 1974
A planetary flyby is the act of sending a space probe past a planet or a dwarf planet close enough to record scientific data.[1] This is a subset of the overall concept of a flyby in spaceflight.
The first flyby of another planet with a functioning spacecraft took place on December 14, 1962, when Mariner 2 zoomed by the planet Venus.[2]
Planetary flybys are commonly used as gravity assist maneuvers to "slingshot" a space probe toward its primary target without expending fuel, but in some cases (such as with New Horizons), flybys are the primary objectives of a mission in of themselves.
A relatively recent example of a flyby spacecraft is New Horizons, which performed flyby maneuvers of Jupiter, Pluto and its moons in the 21st century. The flyby of Jupiter, used as a gravity assist, allowed the craft to reach Pluto at high velocity without the complications of slowing down, after which it proceeded further into the Kuiper Belt on an escape trajectory out of the Solar System.[3]
^"Flyby | Define Flyby at Dictionary.com". Retrieved 2015-07-15.
^"First Planetary Flyby Occurred 50 Years Ago Today". Space.com. 14 December 2012. Retrieved 2015-07-15.
^Talbert, Tricia (2015-03-25). "New Horizons: The First Mission to the Pluto System and the Kuiper Belt". NASA. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
A planetaryflyby is the act of sending a space probe past a planet or a dwarf planet close enough to record scientific data. This is a subset of the...
increase in speed (i.e. increase in kinetic energy) observed during a planetaryflyby (usually of Earth) by a spacecraft. In multiple cases, spacecraft have...
(spaceflight), a spaceflight operation Planetaryflyby, a type of flyby mission Gravity assist or swing-by, a type of flyby making use of the gravity field of...
through planetaryflybys can be used to reduce the energy required to reach Jupiter. Beginning in 1973, several spacecraft performed planetaryflyby manoeuvres...
Europa through a series of flybys while in orbit around Jupiter. It is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. This mission...
Manned Venus Flyby was a 1967–1968 NASA proposal to send three astronauts on a flyby mission to Venus in an Apollo-derived spacecraft in 1973–1974, using...
included a number of interplanetary firsts, including the first planetaryflyby, the planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver. Of the 10 vehicles...
mission to the trans-Neptunian objects by NASA. It was conceived as a planetaryflyby mission in 2002, based on the New Horizons spacecraft, which was in...
Mercury planned for on 5 December 2025, after a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and six flybys of Mercury. The mission was approved in November...
in May 2026, enroute to 16 Psyche List of Earth flybys List of missions to Mars List of planetaryflybys Page 15-16 in Chapter 3 of David S. F. Portree's...
Soviet spacecraft Vega 1 and Vega 2 and ESA spacecraft Giotto all made a flyby of Halley's Comet the year after, in 1986. Although the discovery was retracted...
assist to another body. List of Solar System probes Gravity assist Planetaryflyby Mars flyby "NASA - NSSDC - Spacecraft - Details". Nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov. Retrieved...
mission to Venus and Comet Halley (1984) See List of Earth flybys In addition, several planetary probes have sent back observations of the Earth-Moon system...
Mariner 1, built to conduct the first American planetaryflyby of Venus, was the first spacecraft of NASA's interplanetary Mariner program. Developed...
multiple planetaryflybys to increase its heliocentric velocities, whereas New Horizons received only a single such boost, from its Jupiter flyby in 2007...
The specific energy of a hyperbolic trajectory orbit is positive. Planetaryflybys, used for gravitational slingshots, can be described within the planet's...
probes to study the Sun, the Viking probes to Mars, and the Voyager planetaryflyby and deep-space probes. More recent probes have also been launched from...
to orbit the Sun. Mariner 2 was the first planetaryflyby, passing Venus in 1962. The first successful flyby of Mars was made by Mariner 4 in 1965. Mariner...
In June 2004, it conducted a close flyby of Phoebe, sending back high-resolution images and data. Cassini's flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, captured...
pilot-controlled space flight (Alan Shepard) Freedom 7 1961 May 19 USSR First planetaryflyby (Venus), although contact was lost Venera 1 1961 August 6 USSR First...
and consistently visible weather patterns. At the time of the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989, the planet's southern hemisphere had a Great Dark Spot comparable...
Venus, was the first robotic space probe to report successfully from a planetary encounter. The first successful spacecraft in the NASA Mariner program...
Indirect observations by flyby or orbit currently provide insufficient information to confirm the composition and properties of planetary surfaces. Much of what...
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