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

After 50 years, US to return to moon on January 25

More than 50 years after the last Apollo mission, the United States will try once again to land a craft on the moon on January 25, said the head of what could be the first private company to successfully touch down on the ...

China's Mars probe sends back video of Red Planet

China's space agency released video footage from its spacecraft circling Mars on Friday, two days after it successfully entered the planet's orbit in Beijing's latest ambitious space mission.

Solving the space junk problem

Space is getting crowded. Aging satellites and space debris crowd low-Earth orbit, and launching new satellites adds to the collision risk. The most effective way to solve the space junk problem, according to a new study, ...

The sun as you've never seen it before

Powerful flares, breathtaking views across the solar poles, and a curious solar "hedgehog" are among the haul of spectacular images, movies and data returned by Solar Orbiter from its first close approach to the sun. Although ...

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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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