A gravity assist is a space navigation technique used to accelerate (or decelerate) and redirect a spacecraft by leveraging the gravitational pull and orbital momentum of a planet orbiting the Sun.

He held various jobs at JPL, working on missile trajectories and aerodynamics, before landing with a team calculating how to use a gravity assist maneuver for Mariner 10's Venus and Mercury flyby.

A NASA spacecraft named Lucy, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, has captured a stunning image of Earth, along with a photo of the Earth and the Moon, as part of gravity assist to ...