# Tag Info

## New answers tagged gravity-assist

2

You can certainly reverse a gravity assist to lose velocity. Most inner system probes do so. For a classic gravity assist the object has to leave the influence of the assisting body so for capturing an asteroid the answer is technically no, there is no way to achieve a low altitude circular orbit of a single body purely by gravity assists. It is certainly ...

0

It is instructive to analyze the encounter from the inertial system at rest relative to the planet2; this inertial system is moving with the planet's velocity $U$ relative to the "resting" observer. This is possible because the physics don't change when we look at them from another inertial system. From the planet's point of view the encounter is ...

1

The full answer is beyond the scope of StackExchange. A quick Astrogator tutorial for earth departure to Mars orbit can be found here. Ultimately you will need to use b-plane targeting if you want to get anywhere close to a gravity assist. Even for just simple targetting you will need to know the rough departure asymptote (normally from a Pork Chop plot) ...

Top 50 recent answers are included