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Astrodynamics is the term used to describe the application of Newtonian mechanics to human-made objects in space, such as rockets and spacecraft. It is a subfield of celestial mechanics and ballistics .
Orbital mechanics or astrodynamics is the application of ballistics and celestial mechanics to the practical concerning the motion of rockets, satellites, and other spacecraft. The motion of these objects is usually calculated from Newton's laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation .
In astrodynamics, the characteristic energy is a measure of the excess specific energy over that required to just barely escape from a massive body. The units are length 2 time −2, i.e. velocity squared, or energy per mass.
In astrodynamics, the vis-viva equation is one of the equations that model the motion of orbiting bodies.It is the direct result of the principle of conservation of mechanical energy which applies when the only force acting on an object is its own weight which is the gravitational force determined by the product of the mass of the object and the strength of the surrounding gravitational field.
Keplerian elements parameters can be encoded as text in a number of formats. The most common of them is the NASA / NORAD "two-line elements" (TLE) format, [4] originally designed for use with 80 column punched cards, but still in use because it is the most common format, and 80-character ASCII records can be handled efficiently by modern databases.
A sphere of influence (SOI) in astrodynamics and astronomy is the oblate spheroid-shaped region where a particular celestial body exerts the main gravitational influence on an orbiting object. This is usually used to describe the areas in the Solar System where planets dominate the orbits of surrounding objects such as moons , despite the ...
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.
Simulated view of an object in an elliptic orbit, as seen from the focus of the orbit.The view rotates with the mean anomaly, so the object appears to oscillate back and forth across this mean position with the equation of the center.