P3_5 Fly Me To A Stop

Abstract

We investigate the effect of Voyager 1’s gravity assist (or fly by) on the planet Jupiter. We consider the interaction as an elastic collision and use the conservation of energy and momentum to calculate Jupiter’s change in velocity following the flyby. We determine that after each gravity assist the velocity decreases by 2.229·10⁻²³% and therefore, after 4.350·10²⁴ gravity assists Jupiter's velocity will reach 0ms⁻¹ .