New answers tagged physics
10
I am Patrick Shober (the lead author of the study). Thanks so much for checking it out! If you check out Figure 10 in the paper, I have plotted the specific angular momentum in the Sun-centered frame.
So this shows how the meteoroid (the rock) gained energy during the close encounter but then lost a fraction of it due to the atmospheric passage. This can ...
2
well, its called a gravity assist. the asteroid took a small amount of earth's velocity and used it to speed up. this is different than skipping off a atmosphere think about skipping a rock on a lake, does it speed up? No. With a gravity assist it's like stealing a bit of energy from the planet to propel your much smaller ship, asteroid whatever it is. ...
5
Since a spaceship doesn't really burn much fuel during its voyage, except for at the start, at the end, and for any trajectory correction maneuvers in between, it doesn't really matter whether or not it has fuel for the most part of its flight.
In other words, if it loses its fuel mid-flight, it would likely end up close to where it would have ended up if ...
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