Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo (1920-1984)
Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo (1920-1984)
The Italian engineer and mathematician Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo is regarded as the inventor of gravity assist manoeuvres, more commonly referred to as planetary flybys. Put simply, when a spacecraft passes close to a planet, its speed and trajectory can be altered without the expenditure of propellant. Planetary flyby manoeuvres were first used on the NASA Mariner 10 mission, to enable two more close flybys after the first visit to Mercury. The calculations were made in 1970 by Colombo, a professor at the university of his hometown Padua.
