NASA Asteroid Mission Uses Earth's Gravity As A Slingshot

In its quest to find out how young Earth evolved and life on this planet began, NASA has used Earth's gravity like a slingshot to propel a spacecraft into an orbit that will help it land on an asteroid and bring a sample back home. The maneuver, which is being referred to as a "gravity assist," happened on Friday, when the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that launched last year passed within 11,000 miles of Earth -- a point visible to viewers on the ground through a telescope -- going 19,000 mph. During that pass, our planet's gravity bounced the spacecraft's orbital path 6 degrees, putting it in line with the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu. During its closest point to us, OSIRIS-REx was over Antarctica, although it flew over and was visible to other areas on Friday. "A few weeks after the flyby we will assess the outgoing trajectory on its way to Bennu," Dan Wibben, an expert from company KinetX Aerospace who led the design of the gravity assist maneuver, said in a NASA statement.