flyby
noun
the flight of a spacecraft close enough to a celestial object, as a planet, to gather scientific data.
flybys
-
pluralof flyby.plural
The grammatical form denoting more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The spacecraft is scheduled to carry out 35 flybys of the giant planet's large moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 3, 2026
Aerial flybys revealed somewhere between 700-1,110 structures have been lost since the fires broke out over the weekend, authorities said, with anxious families awaiting news about when they could return.
From Barron's ● Aug. 3, 2026
“Juno had two really close flybys of Io during Juno’s extended mission,” Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, the mission’s principal investigator, said in a statement.
From Salon ● Feb. 3, 2025
It needed to make nine flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury before it could reach the right speed to be captured by Mercury's gravity.
From BBC ● Jan. 9, 2025
To get there, the spacecraft has to follow a circuitous flight path that so far has included a swing around Earth, two Venus flybys, and three passes by Mercury.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 3, 2024
