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A circular orbit is an orbit with a fixed distance around the barycenter; that is, in the shape of a circle. In this case, not only the distance, but also the speed, angular speed, potential and kinetic energy are constant. There is no periapsis or apoapsis. This orbit has no radial version.
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 period of the resultant orbit will be longer than that of the original circular orbit. The consequences of the rules of orbital mechanics are sometimes counter-intuitive. For example, if two spacecrafts are in the same circular orbit and wish to dock, unless they are very close, the trailing craft cannot simply fire its engines to go faster.
The innermost stable circular orbit (often called the ISCO) is the smallest marginally stable circular orbit in which a test particle can stably orbit a massive object in general relativity. [1] The location of the ISCO, the ISCO-radius ( r i s c o {\displaystyle r_{\mathrm {isco} }} ), depends on the mass and angular momentum (spin) of the ...
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 general case for a circular orbit is that it is tilted, spending half an orbit over the northern hemisphere and half over the southern.
A circular orbit is a special case, wherein the foci of the ellipse coincide. The point where the orbiting body is closest to Earth is called the perigee , and when orbiting a body other than earth it is called the periapsis (less properly, "perifocus" or "pericentron").
Figure 1: Velocity v and acceleration a in uniform circular motion at angular rate ω; the speed is constant, but the velocity is always tangential to the orbit; the acceleration has constant magnitude, but always points toward the center of rotation.
A circular orbit may be either stable or unstable. If it is unstable, a small perturbation could destabilize the orbit, but a stable orbit would return to equilibrium. To determine the stability of a circular orbit, determine the concavity of the effective potential.