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Taking a Look at Orbital Mechanics

Decent Essays
Orbital mechanics is the application of ballistic and celestial mechanics to motion, especially pertaining to rockets and spacecraft. Many famous physicists and mathematicians have helped develop equations, formulas, and laws to understand different aspects of orbital mechanics; such as Newton with centripetal force and the gravitational constant (GM) and also Kepler and his three laws of planetary motion. Though my interest did not sprout from who was involved with orbital mechanics, but the orbital mechanics themselves. I’ve always had an interest in astronomy and physics, and this seems like the perfect combinations of both. There are six general aspects of orbital mechanic elements eccentricity (e), semi-major axis (a), inclination (i), argument of periapsis (ω), time of periapsis passage (T), and longitude of ascending node (Ω).

[I will help define these with use of a diagram put I do not have the diagram drawn this is also the diagram of observations of an object in orbit talked about in the outline]

Though these are not the only important elements of orbital mechanics, there is also the period (P) and true anomaly (v) which is “the angular distance of a point in an orbit past the point of periapsis.

Conic sections and conics are use in orbital mechanics to determine the type of orbit and defining the eccentricity of the conic section and the hyperbola or parabola formed within the right cone depending on the angularity of the section. All
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