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Roger A. Broucke (March 25, 1932 – June 21, 2005) was an aerospace engineer known for his solutions to the three-body problem. After working on practical orbital mechanics at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , he became a professor at the University of Texas at Austin .
Astrodynamics is a core discipline within space-mission design and control. Celestial mechanics treats more broadly the orbital dynamics of systems under the influence of gravity , including both spacecraft and natural astronomical bodies such as star systems , planets , moons , and comets .
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 .
In astrodynamics, the characteristic energy is a measure of the excess specific energy over that required to just barely escape from a massive body. The units are length 2 time −2, i.e. velocity squared, or energy per mass.
In astrodynamics, the vis-viva equation is one of the equations that model the motion of orbiting bodies.It is the direct result of the principle of conservation of mechanical energy which applies when the only force acting on an object is its own weight which is the gravitational force determined by the product of the mass of the object and the strength of the surrounding gravitational field.
Figure 1: Approximation of a finite thrust maneuver with an impulsive change in velocity. An impulsive maneuver is the mathematical model of a maneuver as an instantaneous change in the spacecraft's velocity (magnitude and/or direction) [3] as illustrated in figure 1. It is the limit case of a burn to generate a particular amount of delta-v, as ...
[1] For the most efficient example mentioned above, targeting an inclination at apoapsis also changes the argument of periapsis. However, targeting in this manner limits the mission designer to changing the plane only along the line of apsides. [citation needed] For Hohmann transfer orbits, the initial orbit and the final orbit are 180 degrees ...
Simplified Deep Space Perturbations (SDP) models apply to objects with an orbital period greater than 225 minutes, which corresponds to an altitude of 5,877.5 km, assuming a circular orbit. [ 3 ] The SGP4 and SDP4 models were published along with sample code in FORTRAN IV in 1988 with refinements over the original model to handle the larger ...