Sentences with phrase «fast flyby»

When New Horizons roared into a blue Florida sky on 18 January 2006, it was met with excitement and frustration in equal measure: excitement because, after so many fruitless attempts to send a spacecraft to Pluto — ranging from the ill - fated Pluto Fast Flyby (PFF) to the Pluto Kuiper Express (PKE), which breathed their last in ferocious NASA budget cuts in the 1990s and at the turn of the millennium — a mission to explore the last of the nine «traditional» planets in the Solar System was underway, tempered with frustration that it would require such a long period of time in order to reach its quarry.

The specific launch date of 2018 was chosen by Tito after consulting a feasibility analysis study that had been made in the 1990s, which showed that launch windows for very fast flyby missions to Mars which require the minimum amount of fuel (also known as free - return trajectory missions), open every 15 years when Earth and Mars properly align in their orbits.

Not exact matches

At its closest approach to Jupiter during each flyby, the robot briefly becomes the fastest human - made object in the solar system, reaching speeds of about 130,000 mph.

The Mars flyby module and lander arrived on March 3, 1974 but the lander failed due to a fast impact.