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Sketch of a circumlunar free return trajectory (not to scale), plotted on the rotating reference frame rotating with the moon. (Moon's motion only shown for clarity) In orbital mechanics, a free-return trajectory is a trajectory of a spacecraft traveling away from a primary body (for example, the Earth) where gravity due to a secondary body (for example, the Moon) causes the spacecraft to ...
Mars comes closer to Earth more than any other planet save Venus at its nearest—56 million km is the closest distance between Mars and Earth, whereas the closest Venus comes to Earth is 40 million km. Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. Extra-close ...
Several factors make placing a spacecraft into an areostationary orbit more difficult than a geostationary orbit. Since the areostationary orbit lies between Mars's two natural satellites, Phobos (semi-major axis: 9,376 km) and Deimos (semi-major axis: 23,463 km), any satellites in the orbit will suffer increased orbital station keeping costs due to unwanted orbital resonance effects.
It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth directly above the Equator, the plane of the satellite's orbit is the same as the Earth's equatorial plane, and the satellite's orbital inclination is 0°.
The difference between Mars's highest and lowest points is nearly 30 km (from the top of Olympus Mons at an altitude of 21.2 km to Badwater Crater at the bottom of the Hellas impact basin at an altitude of 8.2 km below the datum).
The instruments were used to track Mars’ rotation during the mission’s first 900 days on the planet. ... the interior of Mars, was supposed to last about two years after it landed in November ...
An areosynchronous orbit that is equatorial (in the same plane as the equator of Mars), circular, and prograde (rotating about Mars's axis in the same direction as the planet's surface) is known as an areostationary orbit (AEO). To an observer on the surface of Mars, the position of a satellite in AEO would appear to be fixed in a constant ...
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