Quote:
Originally Posted by Hans Tucker
Wow ..Less than 5 million miles .. hardly a flyby.
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I would suggest that the flight path calculations and initial burn out of Earth orbit, was calculated to not actually intercept Mars - but just get close. Most flight paths have correction burns at some point to fine tune intercept. SpaceX has an online calculator running but I do not think there is someone sitting at a console monitoring the payload. It's a dumb load, no thrusters as far as I know, strictly at the mercy of gravitational forces from now on. Well that is until Elon sends a Starship out to snag it, next time it gets near Mars.