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The orbit of the Moon is a nearly circular ellipse about Earth (the semimajor and semiminor axes are 384,400 km and 383,800 km, respectively: a difference of only 0.16%). The equation of the ellipse yields an eccentricity of 0.0549 and perigee and apogee distances of 362,600 km (225,300 mi) and 405,400 km (251,900 mi) respectively (a difference ...
Orion capsule of Artemis 1 above the Moon in December 2022. In astronomy and spaceflight, a lunar orbit (also known as a selenocentric orbit) is an orbit by an object around Earth's Moon. In general these orbits are not circular. When farthest from the Moon (at apoapsis) a spacecraft is said to be at apolune, apocynthion, or aposelene.
When the orbit is circular and the rotational period has zero inclination, the orbit is considered to also be geostationary. Also known as a Clarke orbit after the writer Arthur C. Clarke. [8] Geostationary orbit (GEO): A circular geosynchronous orbit with an inclination of zero. To an observer on the ground this satellite appears as a fixed ...
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite.It orbits at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), about 30 times the diameter of Earth. Tidal forces between Earth and the Moon have synchronized the Moon's orbital period (lunar month) with its rotation period at 29.5 Earth days, causing the same side of the Moon to always face Earth.
(Given the lunar orbit's eccentricity e = 0.0549, its semi-minor axis is 383,800 km. Thus the Moon's orbit is almost circular.) The barycentric lunar orbit, on the other hand, has a semi-major axis of 379,730 km, the Earth's counter-orbit taking up the difference, 4,670 km. The Moon's average barycentric orbital speed is 1.010 km/s, whilst the ...
An animation showing a low eccentricity orbit (near-circle, in red), and a high eccentricity orbit (ellipse, in purple). In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object [1] such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such ...
Variational orbit: nearly an ellipse, with the Earth at the center. The diagram illustrates the perturbing effect of the Sun on the Moon's orbit, using some simplifying approximations, e.g. that in the absence of the Sun, the Moon's orbit would be circular with the Earth at its center
The standard lunar orbit for Apollo missions was planned as a nominal 60-nautical-mile (110 km) circular orbit above the Moon's surface. Initial lunar orbit insertion was an ellipse with a perilune of 60.0 nautical miles (111.1 km) and an apolune of 168.5 nautical miles (312.1 km), at an inclination of 12° from the lunar equator.