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For the case of orbital transfer between non-coplanar orbits, the change-of-plane thrust must be made at the point where the orbital planes intersect (the "node"). As the objective is to change the direction of the velocity vector by an angle equal to the angle between the planes, almost all of this thrust should be made when the spacecraft is ...
constant orbits or fixed points; periodic orbits; non-constant and non-periodic orbits; An orbit can fail to be closed in two ways. It could be an asymptotically periodic orbit if it converges to a periodic orbit. Such orbits are not closed because they never truly repeat, but they become arbitrarily close to a repeating orbit.
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.
Thus simple harmonic motion is a type of periodic motion. If energy is lost in the system, then the mass exhibits damped oscillation. Note if the real space and phase space plot are not co-linear, the phase space motion becomes elliptical. The area enclosed depends on the amplitude and the maximum momentum.
A radial hyperbolic trajectory is a non-periodic trajectory on a straight line where the relative speed of the two objects always exceeds the escape velocity. There are two cases: the bodies move away from each other or towards each other. This is a hyperbolic orbit with semi-minor axis = 0 and eccentricity = 1.
In classical mechanics, the two-body problem is to calculate and predict the motion of two massive bodies that are orbiting each other in space. The problem assumes that the two bodies are point particles that interact only with one another; the only force affecting each object arises from the other one, and all other objects are ignored.
Celestial motion, without additional forces such as drag forces or the thrust of a rocket, is governed by the reciprocal gravitational acceleration between masses. A generalization is the n-body problem, [3] where a number n of masses are mutually interacting via the gravitational force.
where L 1 is the magnitude of the first particle's angular momentum, which is a constant of motion (conserved) for central forces. If k 2 is greater than one, F 2 − F 1 is a negative number; thus, the added inverse-cube force is attractive, as observed in the green planet of Figures 1–4 and 9.