Cassini used two assists at Venus and one each at Earth and Jupiter in order to reach Saturn. Voyager 2 famously used gravity assists to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the late 1970s and 1980s.
These “ gravity assists” can be pieced together to form almost a kind of invisible jungle gym, helping send probes into the outer solar system or even toward Mercury and the sun. You head toward one place to get to another-or “ by indirections find directions out,” we might say.
Gravity-assisted space travel is when you use the gravitational pull of one planet or other celestial body as a fuel-efficient way to “slingshot” yourself toward another, more distant goal, someplace you could not have reached without assistance, either in terms of your velocity or even your basic direction.
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