Re:China prepares mission to land spacecraft on moon's far side
by acranox on Friday December 07, 2018 @01:15PM
(#18630049)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
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Re:China prepares mission to land spacecraft on moon's far side
by Isamu on Friday December 07, 2018 @01:24PM
(#18630121)
An interesting point from that page:
>A full n-body dynamical system such as the Solar System does not contain these periodic orbits, but does contain quasi-periodic (i.e. bounded but not precisely repeating) orbits following Lissajous-curve trajectories. These quasi-periodic Lissajous orbits are what most of Lagrangian-point space missions have used until now. Although they are not perfectly stable, a modest effort of station keeping keeps a spacecraft in a desired Lissajous orbit for a long time.
Re:China prepares mission to land spacecraft on moon's far side
by daveslash on Friday December 07, 2018 @05:50PM
(#18632435)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_orbit
"Halo orbits can be thought of as resulting from an interaction between the gravitational pull of the two planetary bodies and the Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations on a spacecraft."