Related topics: nasa · satellite · earth · solar system · spacecraft

Are Titan's dunes made of comet dust?

A new theory suggests that Titan's majestic dune fields may have come from outer space. Researchers had always assumed that the sand making up Titan's dunes was locally made, through erosion or condensed from atmospheric ...

'Tube map' around planets and moons made possible by knot theory

Just as sat-nav did away with the need to argue over the best route home, scientists from the University of Surrey have developed a new method to find the optimal routes for future space missions without the need to waste ...

New tidal stellar stream discovered with Gaia

By analyzing the data from ESA's Gaia satellite, Chinese astronomers have detected a new tidal stellar stream in the northern hemisphere, which has a low metallicity and a relatively high energy. The finding was reported ...

NASA technology helps guard against lunar dust

Defeating dust may be a small concern for most people on Earth, but for astronauts and spacecraft destined for the moon or Mars, it is a significant hazard that must be mitigated. That's why researchers at NASA's Kennedy ...

Nukes in space: A bad idea in the 1960s, an even worse one now

The US and Japan are sponsoring a resolution for debate by the United Nations security council which—if passed—will reaffirm international commitments to the 1967 outer space treaty (OST) forbidding the deployment and ...

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Orbit

In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of one object around a point or another body, for example the gravitational orbit of a planet around a star.

Historically, the apparent motion of the planets were first understood in terms of epicycles, which are the sums of numerous circular motions. This predicted the path of the planets quite well, until Johannes Kepler was able to show that the motion of the planets were in fact elliptical motions.[citation needed] Isaac Newton was able to prove that this was equivalent to an inverse square, instantaneously propagating force he called gravitation.[citation needed] Albert Einstein later was able to show that gravity is due to curvature of space-time, and that orbits lie upon geodesics. This is the current understanding.

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