Questions tagged [orbital-maneuver]
In spaceflight, an orbital maneuver is the use of propulsion systems to change the orbit of a spacecraft.
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Most fuel-efficient deorbit from geostationary
Say a spacecraft in geostationary orbit needs to be deorbited (not very common, but bear with me).
How does one decide when and how long should the retrograde burns be, in order to have started with ...
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Would it be possible to Boost ISS to L1 or Lunar Orbit?
NASA and Russia plan to retire the ISS before 2030, and to launch a new lunar outpost to lunar orbit. This output could then be a gateway to future mission to Mars or the outer solar system.
My ...
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Why does this formula for the required delta v of a semi major axis alteration not work or am I I misinterpreting it?
My spaceflight mechanics lecture script has this formula, without derivation or reference.
But I think it does not work. For example let us assume we find ourself in a circular 250km orbit around ...
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Circular to elliptical orbit delta V requirements
this might be a dumb question, but i've been recently trying to calculate the delta V to deorbit a satellite, and I've run into a problem. Assuming a 400km circular starting orbit(and disregarding ...
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Bringing an asteroid into reasonably low Earth orbit--can it be done?
Assume plenty of delta-v is available but it's very slow.
At first glance it looks easy enough, get capture and spiral in. However, we have that big bully in the sky, aka Luna. Is it possible to ...
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Will ESA's Solar Orbiter crash into Venus? If so, why?
The BBC News article European SolO probe ready to take on audacious mission links to the ESA video shown below and contains this 5 minute audio interview with NASA deputy project scientist on the ...
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Inclination maneuvers for GEO satellites
I was wondering about the orbital location to perform inclination nulling maneuvers for GEO satellites.
I know from basic astrodynamics that the best place to perform inclination correction is at ...
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Halley comet flyby
Halley's comet's next perihelion will happen around mid 2061.
Considering, that its orbit is retrograde (viewable here), is it possible to build a flyby trajectory by means of gravitational ...
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Did Juno just do a plane change?
There are several reports in the news that the Juno spacecraft executed a very long propulsive maneuver so that it wouldn't pass through Jupiter's shadow. Apparently it would be in dark so long that ...
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What kind of mission objective would make a parabolic escape trajectory desirable?
As far as I can tell, a trajectory with zero excess velocity would place it (essentially) in nearly the same orbit around the sun as earth (assuming it even departs far away enough for the sun’s ...
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How does the orbit of the Voyager and New Horizons probes manage to get into interstellar space?
I understand that every probe launched has been launched into an orbit. The further you want to go into the solar system, the faster it needs to be moving. And everything orbits the sun until it finds ...
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Could a trajectory from Earth really wrap around Jupiter and then head straight into the Sun? [duplicate]
Comments below How much less delta-v would it take to reach the Sun using Venus and Earth flyby's compared to direct? tend to suggest that one way to send a spacecraft into the Sun (either straight in ...
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What is the highest velocity a spacecraft has left Earth?
The comment below @TomSpilker's answer
I'd love to see anything in LEO that can impart 20.89km/s of delta V to anything.
got me wondering what the highest velocity a spacecraft has left the Earth,...
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What is the delta-v required to get a mass in Earth orbit into the sun using a SINGLE transfer?
I've seen this several related questions to this, but they tend to focus on complex maneuvers to minimize the delta-V. If I wanted to mass-drive, railgun or tether-spin a mass so that it would ...
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Do you need to burn fuel between gravity assists?
If you are planning a mission to an outer planet with multiple gravity assists included, do you need to do some burns for corrections, between the slingshots, or the ideal trajectory is already ...
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Do “partial” Hohmann transfers exist?
I'm doing some research for fiction writing, and I would like to have my plot points comply with known science whenever possible.
Regarding orbital transfers, I know that the fastest way from orbit A ...
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1answer
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How does one calculate the argument of periapsis of an orbit after an arbitrary maneuver?
Given a satellite in an equatorial orbit, a specific prograde or retrograde burn is executed at an arbitrary point within the orbit, and I need to calculate the resulting orbital ellipse.
The ...
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Does Chandrayaan 2 use gravity assist?
All of the descriptions I've seen online describing Chandrayaan-2's path to the Moon either explicitly or implicitly describe it involving a "gravity assist":
The spacecraft will make use of the ...
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Why does TDRS 1's inclination evolve so much differently than that of all the others starting in 1995?
The plot below is from the question Why do the geosynchronous TDRS satellites have this distribution of inclinations?, and the explanation says
Inclination and mean motion (rev/day) for TDRS ...
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Did Cassini's Titan flyby's have scheduled TCM's afterwards? If so, were they usually used?
In this answer I wrote:
But while NEO's are fairly passive and only weakly propulsive (outgassing, photon pressure and thermal radiation effects) deep space spacecraft are active and substantially ...
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Is SpaceX propulsively deorbiting a Starlink satellite already?
The plot below shows that most of the SpaceX Starlink satellites have moved from circa 450 km to circa 550 kilometers already, using their argon-based ion engines.
A few, along with four unidentified ...
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How will the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) satellites achieve their final orbital spacing?
The informative page shows that the RCM satellites are intended to orbit as follows:
Sun-synchronous circular orbit (dawn-dusk mission), nominal altitude =
592.7 km, inclination = 97.74º, period ...
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Transfer between circular orbits in up to 5 maneuvers
There are 2 circular orbits with different inclination and RAAN. I have to transfer from a specific point (true anomaly given) of one orbit to a given point of another in 1 month. The period of the ...
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On the dynamics of two connected objects located at different circular orbits
I'm just thinking about the qualitative and quantitative implications of a hypothetical orbital problem, but what I ended up does not make sense as it should.
In particular, assume that two objects ...
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Can someone help Scott Manley explain this Snoopy-capturing maneuver?
In his recent video Apollo 10's Lunar Module Snoopy Is Lost In Space - Could We Bring it Home? Scott Manley uses some fancy supplemental techniques in KSP to simulate and explain a possible mission to ...
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How often are satellites in GEO moved to follow customer demand?
The BBC News article Inmarsat lays big satellite order with Airbus says:
The firm is buying three new spacecraft to augment its Global Xpress system, which provides connectivity to on-the-move and ...
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How much Delta-V is needed for Orbital Maintenance?
My question is aimed at understanding the how much Delta-V is needed for orbital maintenance for different orbits. Obviously, there still is some residual air resistance that decreases as the orbital ...
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How do I calculate the change in the argument of periapsis after a plane change maneuver?
Let's say I have a spacecraft in an initial geocentric orbit with the following parameters: a = 7,960,000 m, e = 0.010, $\Omega$ = 180$^{\circ}$, i = 98$^{\circ}$, $\omega$ = 90$^{\circ}$, $\theta_0$ =...
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Using the distance components to calculate minimal dV randezvouz trajectory
The are objects on 100 circular orbits, 1 object on each orbit. One orbit is said to be initial (I) and others are final (F) .
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Lambert problem solver needed for custom gravity in Python
I need to solve the Lambert problem, however, I have a custom gravity model.
My ODE of motion is:
...
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1answer
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Determine the “nearest” orbit
There are 100 circular orbits with different radii, inclinations and RAAN. The nearest orbit by definition is the one, which requires less $\Delta V$ for a transfer.
Assumed that 2 impulsive ...
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How will Starlink satellites deploy from the fairing and reach their orbits?
Elon Musk posted this picture of the first 60 Starlink satellites packed densely into the fairing of the Falcon scheduled to launch in a few hours.
There doesn't appear to be a launcher or ejector to ...
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Can the ISS boost maneuver engine be heard by the astronauts on board?
In the extremely cool demonstration video Demonstration of Acceleration Inside the International Space Station During a Reboost ISS Expedition 22 Commander Jeffry Williams says near the end at ...
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How to find Horizons ephemerides or Spice kernels for the cis-lunar halo orbits of the Themis B & C) spacecraft?
The Themis spacecraft B and C have been renamed ARTEMIS P1 and P2 and moved around in cis-lunar space from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit.
This transfer involved libration point orbits, as discussed in ...
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How to find the transfer orbit from a initial circular orbit to a final elliptical orbit
Is a hohmann transfer or bi-elliptical transfer more efficient for this case? How can I find the transfer orbit that conserves the most deltaV?
I will be going from a circular Earth centered orbit ...
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What if GOCE rolled 90°?
Reading this question: Is GOCE a satellite or aircraft?
I wondered what would happen if GOCE rolled 90° in either direction, so that it's solar panels become parallel to Earth's horizon, and then ...
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Minor query on mid course correction and cryogenic oxygen tank incident in Apollo 13 flight path
In the flight path of Apollo 13 (data taken from Wikipedia), the first mid course correction was done at 30:40:50 and cryogenic oxygen tank incident occurred at 55:54:53. I have three small questions ...
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Could a satellite in GEO-orbit make an evasive maneuver to avoid an anti-satellite impactor?
Communication satellites orbit at an altitude a couple of hundred times above the satellite that the Indian government recently shot down. Also GPS-satellites are about one hundred times further up ...
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What is the smallest body in which a sling shot maneuver can be performed?
This question asks about the smallest sling shot maneuver performed. What was the smallest intentional, acknowledged slingshot maneuver?
I'm asking how small of an object be to perform a sling shot ...
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Rendezvouses in halo or lissajous orbits
If a spacecraft was in an EM-L2 halo/lissajous orbit, and another craft would was going to approach EM-L2 a few days later, could they rendezvous immediately or is there a limitation when the second ...
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Fastest orbit transfer constrained by maximum g-force magnitude
Let's consider an imaginary constant 1g rocket from Earth to Mars. What is the fastest possible trajectory?
Intuitively it seems that the fastest travel time is achieved with the "radial" trajectory (...
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What was the smallest intentional, acknowledged slingshot maneuver?
I'll keep it short but please read through!
Gravitation's $1/r$ potential means everything in the solar system is pulling on everything all the time.
Gravitational slingshot maneuvers are normally ...
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1answer
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Space Shuttle Orbiter VRCS
I am looking for details on the Space Shuttle Orbiter Vernier Reaction Control System (VRCS), used for fine maneuvers on orbit, such as docking. Wikipedia has very little information on the system. ...
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ISS location identification; estimate size and direction of astronaut acceleration puzzler
note: This question addresses the same video and phenomenon described in this answer (which I found after posting this) but here I'm asking for an analysis of the trajectories of the test masses (the ...
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Orbit class or library or functions [closed]
I am (like a hundred other people, like a thousand other people) trying to make a space flight simulator. I'm not a student. (That said, I found Orbit – space flight sim. It’s excellent.* You ...
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What's the lowest altitude that an ion engine has been used for a significant orbital maneuver?
I'm thinking about trying to calculate something for Where do ion propulsion's ions go? Do they remain in the solar system or shoot out into interstellar space?
Excluding low altitude tests of ion ...
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How would one calculate the Lunar liftoff thrust required for a spacecraft?
I used the thrust to weight ratio of 2.12 to determine the thrust my spacecraft needs for a lunar liftoff, Apollo Lunar Ascent Stage Thrust to Weight Ratio.
Is this a proper way of determining and ...
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Use of thrusters for Collision Avoidance Maneuver
I'm building an orbit propagator that gives the position of two satellites at time T. The position are expressed in ECI and after that are being transformed in LVLH frame (as mentioned ECI to LVLH ...
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Why does the Apollo-8 Trans-Lunar Injection burn appear to be pulsing in this photo?
This tweet called my attention to The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum story Photographing Apollo 8's Orbit Toward the Moon. The story is quite an interesting bit of space history and worth a ...
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Did the astronauts of Gemini 4 have any realistic rendezvous simulator training of orbital mechanic effects?
Gemini 4 was launched on June 3, 1965. It mission included the first attempt of a rendezvous manoeuvrer in space. The rendezvous test failed.
Two years earlier, in June 1963, the Rendezvous Docking ...
