Called the Interplanetary Superhighway, the system was conceived by Martin Lo, whose software was used to help design the flight path for NASA’s Genesis mission, which is currently using this “freeway in space” on its mission to collect solar wind particles for return to Earth.
Most missions are designed to take advantage of the way gravity pulls on a spacecraft when it swings by a body such as a planet or moon. Lo’s concept takes advantage of another factor, the Sun’s pull on the planets or a planet’s pull on its nearby moons. Forces from many directions nearly cancel each other out, leaving paths through the gravity fields in which spacecraft can travel.Fact Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/genesis/media/jpl-release-071702.html
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