New York – Francesco Topputo from the Politecnico di Milano and Edward Belbruno of Princeton University have been published in Scientific American. The two researchers showed that it is possible to significantly reduce costs of the Earth-Mars transfer by using the concept of capture ballistics. The technique exploits the simultaneous gravitational pulls of two or more celestial bodies on the satellite, violating the basic assumptions of the patched-conics model, currently in use. With ballistic capture, the satellite approaches Mars in a smoother and cheaper way. (9Colonne)
