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Gravity assist velocity diagram. Earth orbits the Sun in one Earth year, Mars in 1.881. Neither orbit is perfectly circular; Earth has an orbital eccentricity of 0.0168, and Mars of 0.0934. The two orbits are not quite coplanar either, as the orbit of Mars is inclined by 1.85 degrees to that of Earth. The effect of the gravity of Mars on the ...
The InSight mission to Mars launched with a C 3 of 8.19 km 2 /s 2. [5] The Parker Solar Probe (via Venus) plans a maximum C 3 of 154 km 2 /s 2. [6] Typical ballistic C 3 (km 2 /s 2) to get from Earth to various planets: Mars 8-16, [7] Jupiter 80, Saturn or Uranus 147. [8] To Pluto (with its orbital inclination) needs about 160–164 km 2 /s 2. [9]
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 lunar cycler or Earth–Moon cycler is a cycler orbit, or spacecraft therein, which periodically passes close by the Earth and the Moon, using gravity assists and occasional propellant-powered corrections to maintain its trajectories between the two. If the fuel required to reach a particular cycler orbit from both the Earth and the Moon is ...
The diagram shows a Hohmann transfer orbit to bring a spacecraft from a lower circular orbit into a higher one. It is an elliptic orbit that is tangential both to the lower circular orbit the spacecraft is to leave (cyan, labeled 1 on diagram) and the higher circular orbit that it is to reach (red, labeled 3 on diagram).
An areosynchronous orbit that is equatorial (in the same plane as the equator of Mars), circular, and prograde (rotating about Mars's axis in the same direction as the planet's surface) is known as an areostationary orbit (AEO). To an observer on the surface of Mars, the position of a satellite in AEO would appear to be fixed in a constant ...
Orbital position vector, orbital velocity vector, other orbital elements. In astrodynamics and celestial dynamics, the orbital state vectors (sometimes state vectors) of an orbit are Cartesian vectors of position and velocity that together with their time () uniquely determine the trajectory of the orbiting body in space.
Mars comes closer to Earth more than any other planet save Venus at its nearest—56 million km is the closest distance between Mars and Earth, whereas the closest Venus comes to Earth is 40 million km. Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. Extra-close ...