Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to the practical problems concerning the motion of rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft.
The boost phase is the portion of the flight of a ballistic missile or space vehicle during which the booster and sustainer engines operate until it reaches peak velocity. . This phase can take 3 to 4 minutes for a solid rocket (shorter for a liquid-propellant rocket), the altitude at the end of this phase is 150–200 km, and the typical burn-out speed is 7 k
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 ...
The middle rocket shows the straight-line flight configuration in which the direction of thrust is along the center line of the rocket and through the center of gravity of the rocket. On the rocket at the left, the nozzle has been deflected to the left and the thrust line is now inclined to the rocket center line at an angle called the gimbal ...
A satellite ground track or satellite ground trace is the path on the surface of a planet directly below a satellite's trajectory. It is also known as a suborbital track or subsatellite track, and is the vertical projection of the satellite's orbit onto the surface of the Earth (or whatever body the satellite is orbiting). [1]
A space vehicle's flight is determined by application of Newton's second law of motion: =, where F is the vector sum of all forces exerted on the vehicle, m is its current mass, and a is the acceleration vector, the instantaneous rate of change of velocity (v), which in turn is the instantaneous rate of change of displacement.
However, exterior ballistics analysis also deals with the trajectories of rocket-assisted gun-launched projectiles and gun-launched rockets; and rockets that acquire all their trajectory velocity from the interior ballistics of their on-board propulsion system, either a rocket motor or air-breathing engine, both during their boost phase and ...
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 ...