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Loading contentThe launch and the long interplanetary cruise to the target, often using gravity assists or ion propulsion to reach a distant small body.
mission_phase:launch-and-cruiseDataset membership
Open data
In the graph export: graph.json · graph.jsonld
Planned API: GET /api/v0/entities/mission_phase:launch-and-cruise
Scientific entity. See the evidence framework and authority dashboard.
How Launch & Cruise connects across Asteria Star — scientific, cultural, and astrological links are kept separate.
The final approach, when the target grows from a point of light into a resolved world and the spacecraft measures its shape, spin, and gravity to plan operations.
Vesta & Ceres orbiter · NASA · launched 2007.
Lucy is touring a record number of asteroids, including several of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.
The final approach, when the target grows from a point of light into a resolved world and the spacecraft measures its shape, spin, and gravity to plan operations.
Extended operations close to the body — global mapping, orbiting, and selecting sites for a landing, sampling, or impact.
For sample-return missions, the journey home and the high-speed atmospheric reentry of the capsule to a recovery site — the phase that delivers the science to Earth.
The critical interaction with the surface — a touchdown, a landing, a sample-collection manoeuvre, or a deliberate impact.
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.
European missions, observatories, and space science imagery.