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### Can an asteroid enter Earth orbit?

Can an asteroid pass near Earth at a right velocity and angle to bend its trajectory and make an orbit? Note: I know about objects such as 2016 HO3, which are quasi-satellites of Earth due to ...
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### Do space agencies take measures to prevent spent upper stages from becoming space junk?

I've been playing a lot of Kerbal Space Program lately. I've launched quite a few "half-failed" missions where my craft will get to where it's going, or very close to it, only for me to realize that ...
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### What asteroids have the least delta-v to reach?

I think the question needs very little clarification - specific asteroids and/or their asteroid orbit type would answer it. My own interest is in what would best suit targeting for asteroid mining on ...
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### What ever happened to 6Q0B44E - potentially the "artificial satellite (with) the farthest orbit around the Earth"?

I just started flipping through Handbook of Space Engineering Archaeology, and Heritage Space Hardware Ann Darrin & Beth L. O'Leary, Eds. 2009, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1035 pages It looks as though ...
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### Thrown-together \$200 million mission to asteroid 2020 SO; check out or nudge to longer-lasting mini-moon orbit

This tweet says in part: Earth's potential new minimoon, 2020 SO may be the Surveyor 2 Centaur rocket body, launched in September 1966. Integrating backwards shows 2020 SO2 to also be orbiting Earth ...
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### Possible idea for a simulation in orbital mechanics using data from the JPL [closed]

I have to write a research essay and have decided to write it on orbital mechanics where I would use data from the JPL to perform an experiment (simulation). I was thinking of using the location data ...
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### Two-body problem VS Three-body problem Applications

The two-body problem deals with two bodies under certain assumptions while the restricted three-body problem deals with three bodies where one has a negligible mass (i.e. spacecraft or comet) I was ...
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### slowest crash on the Moon?

Let's say I launched something into lunar orbit with minimal of propellant - just enough for trajectory corrections and then a final push to de-orbit. What is the slowest crash landing speed (both ...
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### Hyperbolic orbit: correct?

I'm writing a sci-fi story. The protagonist wants to strap rockets to an asteroid and send it rocketing to earth, into orbit, to harvest the metals, etc. An acquaintance (i lost contact with him but ...
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### Why did they think that S509356 was in orbit around the Earth? Where is the disconnect?

tl;dr: I have met the disconnect, and the disconnect is me! This answer suggests that the object S509356 could potentially be a candidate for being called a "mini-moon", an object which ...
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### Is it possible for an asteroid to be captured by earth in such a way that it has minimal relative velocity?

Is it possible for a metal (or dirt/ice) asteroid of 1km average diameter to enter the Earth-Moon system in such a way that the asteroid behaves as if it were dropped from a height instead of as a ...