Orbit

able to undock from the command module. The command module would be equipped with a SEP system to get the crew to and from the Martian system. The lander/ habitation module would have a LOX-methane propulsion system capable of returning it to Martian orbit to rendezvous with the command module. Testing of the spacecraft design includes several phases. The first testing phase is the terrestrial phase. Each component of the spacecraft will undergo strenuous tests on the ground. After being…

composition orbit the planet. The most interesting of the moons are the first four moons discovered beyond Earth, the Galilean Moons. Jupiter’s four largest moons are called the Galilean moons named after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei who first observed them in 1610. The moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto and their names come from the lovers of Zeus. Ganymede, Io, and Europa are all in orbital resonance with Jupiter. In the same time it take Ganymede to complete one orbit around…

would we. The gravity in other words the force that attracts you to something is a big part of our universe. At http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/, Gravity impacts our length/size and distance of our orbit by the strong pull of gravity. The gravity of the sun keeps us orbiting. They stay in orbit because no other force in the Solar System is trying to pull them. The only force that is trying to pull them is sun and gravity. The gravity helps the sun so the planet’s will keep…

theories were proposed, notably that of Jan Oort. Oort’s hypothesis was of a sphere of protocomets in orbit far away from the sun. Occasionally, some of its contents broke free to plummet into the inner solar system, where they would become comets. Oort’s idea explained long-period comets, but his assumption explaining short period comets (long-life comets whose encounter with a planet shortened its orbit) proved incorrect. Although Gerard Kuiper is widely credited with the original idea of the…

first law, Kepler rejected Copernicus and the Ptolemaic Conception when stating that, “ …the orbits of the planets around the sun were not circular, but elliptical, with the sun at one focus of the ellipse rather than at the center.” According to the Ptolemaic Theory and Aristotle, the planets moved in the most perfect circular and uniform motion. However, Johannes Kepler argued that the planets do not orbit in circles, but in ellipses. His second law demonstrated that the speed of a planet is…

We all experience day and night and every night when the sun goes down, we have a different form of light. The moon orbits the Earth, like the Earth orbits the sun. The moon we see only orbits around Earth. As the moon orbits our planet, we see that the shape of the moon changes throughout each month. This is because the amount of light that the sun that illuminates the moon changes monthly. These are called the phases of the moon. The phases of the moon are the changes in amount of moon…

the landers. The landers used a heat shield to leave orbit, then parachuted to the surface, using retro-rockets to further slow descent. Viking 1 landed on an ancient lava flow Viking 2 landed 6 weeks later about 5000 km away. The orbiters and landers returned over 55,000 images. Over the next four years, over 4 million weather reports from the Martian surface were transmitted to Earth. The landers studied the…

fascinating dwarf planet Pluto is much more petite than the other planets in our Solar System, which makes it a dwarf planet but that is not the only reason why. In the solar system the dwarf planet does not complete the neighborhood around Pluto’s orbit which means it doesn’t clear the path around the sun, this is another reason why Pluto is a dwarf planet. The dwarf planet Pluto has five moons Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. The gigantic moon Charon is Pluto’s largest moon nearly half…

Wanderer Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free, you can’t take Pluto from me. Probably the most debated planet, Pluto was discovered in 1905 by Percival Lowell with predictions calculated through the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. However, Pluto was officially seen and declared as a planet in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh through a telescope (“Pluto Discovered.”). It has only been recently that we have discovered more about Pluto as the mission, New…

ago, and 30 to 50 million years after the solar system began to form, a mars sized rock created a modern tool used everyday by everybody. Earth’s moon is unique in matter and how it became apart of our planet's orbit. Moons are captured by their planets by their rings and pull of the orbit of the planet. Jupiter has 60 captured moons all with different molecular material than the other. Earth's moon was discovered to have matched a sample of earth's soil indicating the making of the moon…