Flandro identifies a four-planet gravity-assist opportunity

Assembled from 19 blocks · 1 evidence · 30 related

1. Story
2. Working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Gary Flandro examined the future positions of the outer planets and found that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would be arranged in the late 1970s so that a single spacecraft could be handed from one to the next by gravity assist. The result was not a new technique but a dated constraint: the geometry would close, and would not repeat for well over a century.
3. Knowledge
4. Gravity assist
5. Gary Flandro
6. Flandro identifies a four-planet gravity-assist opportunity
7. Connections
8. Gary Flandro
9. Gravity assist
10. The Grand Tour alignment
11. Flandro identifies a four-planet gravity-assist opportunity
12. Voyager 1
13. Voyager 2
14. Flandro identifies a four-planet gravity-assist opportunity
15. The Grand Tour alignment
16. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
17. Voyager 2 passes Saturn and continues towards Uranus
18. Evidence
19. The late-1970s alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune permits a single spacecraft to reach all four by successive gravity assists, an opportunity recurring only on a timescale of roughly 175 to 176 years. V55 verification basis: NOT CHECKED IN THIS RUN. The title, journal, volume and year are given from standard citation practice and the search budget was exhausted before they could be confirmed; the 175 versus 176 year figure differs between accounts and is deliberately given as a range. A curator must verify this citation before publication.