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Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to the practical concerning the motion of rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft. The motion of these objects is usually calculated from Newton's laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation .
A rocket's required mass ratio as a function of effective exhaust velocity ratio. The classical rocket equation, or ideal rocket equation is a mathematical equation that describes the motion of vehicles that follow the basic principle of a rocket: a device that can apply acceleration to itself using thrust by expelling part of its mass with high velocity and can thereby move due to the ...
In classical mechanics, the two-body problem is to calculate and predict the motion of two massive bodies that are orbiting each other in space. The problem assumes that the two bodies are point particles that interact only with one another; the only force affecting each object arises from the other one, and all other objects are ignored.
where E is the total orbital energy, L is the angular momentum, m rdc is the reduced mass, and the coefficient of the inverse-square law central force such as in the theory of gravity or electrostatics in classical physics: = (is negative for an attractive force, positive for a repulsive one; related to the Kepler problem)
In astrodynamics, an orbit equation defines the path of orbiting body around central body relative to , without specifying position as a function of time.Under standard assumptions, a body moving under the influence of a force, directed to a central body, with a magnitude inversely proportional to the square of the distance (such as gravity), has an orbit that is a conic section (i.e. circular ...
Every object in a 2-body ballistic trajectory has a constant specific orbital energy equal to the sum of its specific kinetic and specific potential energy: = = =, where = is the standard gravitational parameter of the massive body with mass , and is the radial distance from its center. As an object in an escape trajectory moves outward, its ...
The center of mass, in accordance with the law of conservation of momentum, remains in place. In physics , specifically classical mechanics , the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta ) of three point masses that orbit each other in space and calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton's laws of ...
Given the total mass and the scalars r and v at a single point of the orbit, one can compute: . r and v at any other point in the orbit; and; the specific orbital energy, allowing an object orbiting a larger object to be classified as having not enough energy to remain in orbit, hence being "suborbital" (a ballistic missile, for example), having enough energy to be "orbital", but without the ...