[X] My Assistant

[elakdawalla]

Hi all, I thought I'd start a thread for people to dump questions that they might think are good for Planetary Radio. Planetary Radio is The Planetary Society's weekly half-hour podcast. It features an interview by producer Mat Kaplan with a space scientist, engineer, advocate, or well-wisher, and three regular segments: news headlines, "What's up" with Bruce Betts, and a Questions and Answers segment that I read. Each week, Q and A addresses one question, with half of the answer given at the beginning of the show, and half toward the end, each half lasting between 1 and 2 minutes. I get lots of questions submitted but the majority of them can't easily be answered in this rather strict format, so I am always looking for more questions.

So, please post your questions! They don't have to be questions that you don't actually know the answers to -- also please consider submitting questions your friends and family ask you, as those are often some of the best. And, if you see a question here that you can answer, please don't hesitate to answer it and save me a little research work!

--Emily

[edstrick]

The Japanese used Lunar flybys to set up their Nozomi Mars orbiter mission on an Earth flyby where they did a rocket burn at closest approach to get the maximum hyperbolic excess velocity boost from the rocket firing, post flyby.

Lunar flybys are entirely usesful for missions between geostationary, Earth/Moon L-points, and Earth-sun L-points, as well as missions essentially along Earth's orbit. The two Stereo solar observatories did lunar flybys to eject them from high apogee Earth orbits, I don't recall if Spitzer did any lunar flyby or left Earth on a direct escape trajectory.

Anything requiring significant changes in perihelion/aphelion distance, going to Mars or Venus or beyond, lunar flybys don't provide much help and complicate misison planning for little benefit. (Try chopping a 3 week long series of daily Mars launch windows into a single <maybe> 1 day launch window with lunar flyby!)