How Space Missions Make Discoveries On The Way To Their Main Destinations

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Headlines:

Here are 10 current news headlines from around the world with a similar categorization: * NASA's Perseverance Rover Discovers Evidence of Ancient Lake on Mars (National Geographic)

* SpaceX's Starship Completes Critical Ground Testing (Space. com)

* European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin rover to explore Venus (ESA)

* China's Chang'e 5 Mission Returns to Earth after Lunar Sample Retrieval (Xinhua News Agency)

* Private Space Company Blue Origin Launches Uncrewed New Shepard Flight (CNBC)

* NASA's Artemis Program Aims to Return Humans to the Moon by 2024 (BBC News)

* India's Chandrayaan-3 Mission to Launch in October (PTI)

* SpaceX's Crew-4 Mission to the International Space Station (CNN)

* Japan's Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Returns to Earth with Samples of Comet (NHK)

* Blue Origin's New Shepard Capsule Completes Successful Test Flight (The Verge)

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To get somewhere in outer space, you can't exactly drive in a straight line. Orbits are tricky things, and sending a probe to a faraway planet involves lots of loop-de-loops around other planets on the way. These moves are known as gravity assists, where a spacecraft swings by a massive planet to slingshot itself towards its destination.

These trajectory tricks are more than just pit stops on the long journey—they can be prime time to do some bonus science before the spacecraft's main mission. Many solar system missions have made significant discoveries during such flybys, from the earliest probes of the 1970s to BepiColombo's recent Mercury flyby and perhaps Europa Clipper's Mars flyby happening next month.

The planets closest to Earth get the most flyby action: Mars, Venus, and of course, Earth itself. Just last year (and twice before in 2020 and 2021), NASA's Parker Solar Probe dipped by Venus, helping the spacecraft get closer to the Sun than any other human made object before it. One of Parker's cameras was pointed at Venus to track changes in our neighboring planet's thick clouds, but it also gave scientists a surprise—at longer wavelengths of light, the camera was able to peer down to Venus's ultra-hot surface . These images revealed strange differences from observations of Venus's surface by the Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s , which may be details missed by the earlier images such as places where the ground is made of different materials.

The famous Cassini mission to Saturn also made two trips to Venus in 1998 and 1999 . Using its various instruments, Cassini measured the amount of dust in the inner solar system , plus ions and other particles streaming off the Sun. It even took some photos of Earth's Moon when it passed by us. Since this particular mission was traveling farther out in our solar system, it also did a flyby of Jupiter, spending about six months exploring the giant planet. Cassini revealed a second storm similar to the Great Red Spot , and recorded how small storms globbed on to large storms to make even bigger storms in Jupiter's tumultuous atmosphere.