Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This is a featured picture, which means that members of the community have identified it as one of the finest images on the English Wikipedia, adding significantly to its accompanying article. If you have a different image of similar quality, be sure to upload it using the proper free license tag, add it to a relevant article, and nominate it.
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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.
Multistage rocket; Apogee kick motor; Space tug; Lists of rockets; List of orbital launch systems; Comparison of orbital launchers families; Comparison of orbital launch systems; Comparison of space station cargo vehicles; List of space launch system designs; Lists of spacecraft
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]
The British satellite launcher Black Arrow was an example of a rocket that flew a preprogrammed pitch schedule, making no attempt to correct for errors in its trajectory, while the Apollo-Saturn rockets used "closed loop" inertial guidance after the gravity turn through the atmosphere.