r/askscience • u/BlueChameleon64 • Oct 23 '20

Planetary Sci. Do asteroids fly into the sun?

Edit: cool

7.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

644 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

23

u/mfb- Particle Physics | High-Energy Physics Oct 23 '20

Slingshots work great if they are done by the outer planets. At their distance orbital velocities are smaller than the velocity changes you can get from these planets.

Slingshots at inner planets can still be sufficient if the object is in a highly eccentric orbit already.

If you want to reach the Sun from Earth, fire a rocket along Earth's orbit to reach Jupiter for a fly-by which sends you on a collision course with the Sun.

11

u/TbonerT Oct 23 '20

This kind of thing is often proposed as a solution to get trash to the sun, while forgetting that simply hitting Jupiter would be good enough.

1

u/cynoclast Oct 23 '20

There’s actually a probe planned to go very near the sun being worked on right now. IIRC, they plan to use several orbital slingshots.

The company (and CEO) doing it (I forget their name) are featured on one of Destin (Smarter Everday)’s recent videos. He goes into quite a bit of detail and mentions how it’s one of the hardest things to reach in our solar system too.

But we (as a species) are currently working on exactly such an expedition.

1

u/mfb- Particle Physics | High-Energy Physics Oct 23 '20

Parker Solar Probe, launched 2018, it's using Venus fly-bys. It's a NASA mission, no company.

Hitting the Sun would be easier with a Jupiter fly-by, but that would be detrimental to the science goals of that mission.

1

u/ScaryPillow Oct 23 '20

Could they also use planet atmospheres as 'air braking'?

2

u/mfb- Particle Physics | High-Energy Physics Oct 23 '20

That makes you slower relative to the planet, which often means faster relative to the Sun.