Michael Minovitch
Encyclopedia
Michael Minovitch is an American mathematician
who showed that spacecraft trajectories could be designed such that they could gain velocity by travelling close to a planet orbiting the sun. This gravity assist technique was developed in the early 1960s when he was a UCLA graduate student working summers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
.
Early studies of comets in the late 19th century showed that their orbits were quite different after they had made a close approach to Jupiter
. This indicated that a transfer of energy had occurred during the encounter, but it was not until Minovitch's work that it was shown to be useful in planning an interplanetary voyage.
The first mission to use this technique was the Mariner 10
trip to Venus
and Mercury
in 1973.
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
who showed that spacecraft trajectories could be designed such that they could gain velocity by travelling close to a planet orbiting the sun. This gravity assist technique was developed in the early 1960s when he was a UCLA graduate student working summers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena...
.
Early studies of comets in the late 19th century showed that their orbits were quite different after they had made a close approach to Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
. This indicated that a transfer of energy had occurred during the encounter, but it was not until Minovitch's work that it was shown to be useful in planning an interplanetary voyage.
The first mission to use this technique was the Mariner 10
Mariner 10
Mariner 10 was an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. It was launched approximately two years after Mariner 9 and was the last spacecraft in the Mariner program...
trip to Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
and Mercury
Mercury (planet)
Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
in 1973.
- Gravity assist
- Gary FlandroGary FlandroGary Flandro, PhD is an American aerospace engineer who currently holds the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He is also the Vice President and Chief Engineer at Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories . Flandro is an 11th generation pupil of Euler...
External links
- Michael Minovitch's Gravity Assist History Site.
- Jupiter swing-by trajectories passing near the earth Includes comprehensive history of the development of gravity-assist trajectories.