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A Mars cycler is an elliptical orbit (green) that crosses the orbits of Earth (blue) and Mars (red), and encounters both planets at the points where it crosses their orbits, although not necessarily on every orbit. (Not to scale.) A Mars cycler (or Earth–Mars cycler) is a kind of cycler, a spacecraft with a trajectory that encounters Earth ...
Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million km) (12.673 light minutes), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. [1][2] The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days [3] and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, [4] making the average orbital speed 24 km/s. The eccentricity is greater than that of every other planet except Mercury ...
At one point, 1.35 million Earth years ago, Mars had an eccentricity of roughly 0.002, much less than that of Earth today. [188] Mars's cycle of eccentricity is 96,000 Earth years compared to Earth's cycle of 100,000 years. [189] Mars has its closest approach to Earth in a synodic period of 779.94 days.
The axial tilt of Jupiter is 3.13°, which is relatively small, so its seasons are insignificant compared to those of Earth and Mars. [ 134 ] Jupiter's rotation is the fastest of all the Solar System's planets, completing a rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours; this creates an equatorial bulge easily seen through an amateur ...
Apparent retrograde motion of Mars in 2003 as seen from Earth The term retrograde is from the Latin word retrogradus – "backward-step", the affix retro- meaning "backwards" and gradus "step". Retrograde is most commonly an adjective used to describe the path of a planet as it travels through the night sky, with respect to the zodiac , stars ...
Astronomy on Mars. Mosaic of two different Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) exposures of Earth, the Moon, and Jupiter from 2003. Mars sky turned violet by water ice clouds. Close-up of Mars sky at sunset, showing more color variation, as imaged by Mars Pathfinder.
In astronautics, the Hohmann transfer orbit (/ ˈhoʊmən /) is an orbital maneuver used to transfer a spacecraft between two orbits of different altitudes around a central body. For example, a Hohmann transfer could be used to raise a satellite's orbit from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit. In the idealized case, the initial and target ...
Transits occurring when Mars is at its ascending node take place in May, those at descending node happen in November. This cycle corresponds fairly closely to 151 Mars orbits, 284 Earth orbits, and 133 synodic periods, and is analogous to the cycle of transits of Venus from Earth, which follow a cycle of 243 years (121.5, 8, 105.5, 8). There ...