[sci.space] Giotto - first Earth gravity assist manoeuvre?

LMASSONN@ESOC.BITNET (Lutz Massonne) (06/17/91)

As far as I remember, ICE used MOON fly-bys to get away from
its Lagrange point position.
That was a rather complicated task (NASA produced a nice brochure
showing the very complex orbit as they needed a lot of moon fly-bys
to achieve the orbital velocity to get away from earth)
to re-use this probe never foreseen to be a comet explorer,
but Giotto really did the first controlled earth-gravity assist
manoeuvre (shortly before Galileo :-) ).

Regards, Lutz Massonne