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August 2019 Issue,
Volume 87, No. 8
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The meeting of two spacecraft in orbit around a planet or moon involves a delicate dance that must carefully balance the gravitational, Coriolis, and centrifugal forces acting on the spacecraft. The intricacy of the relative motion between the two spacecraft caused problems for the Gemini missions in the mid-1960s. Although now mastered, the problem of how to bring two orbiting objects together continues to be misrepresented in popular movies and books. In this article, I will consider the case when the two spacecraft are in close proximity (compared with the radii of their orbits), and examine the counter-intuitive trajectories that are needed to bring them together. I will examine how a stranded astronaut might use an impulsive force to return to her ship in Earth orbit, how and when line-of-sight targeting may be used for a rendezvous, and how the Apollo 11 lunar module executed a Terminal Phase Initiation maneuver to rendezvous with the command/service module as they both circled the Moon.
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Papers
by Jennifer Blue, Adrienne Traxler, and Geraldine Cochran. DOI: 10.1119/1.5114628
by听 Bradley W. Carroll. DOI: 10.1119/1.5115341
by Filipe Moura. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5099891
by Humphrey J. Maris. DOI: 10.1119/1.5100939
by Stefan Isermann. DOI: 10.1119/1.5100942
by John R. Walkup, Roger A. Key, Patrick R. M. Talbot, and Michael A. Walkup. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5100946
byYakir Aharonov, Eliahu Cohen, and David H. Oaknin. DOI: 10.1119/1.5115980
by Pawel Lewulis, and Andrzej Dragan. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5115471
Back of the听 Envelope
by Sanjoy Mahajan. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5111838
Notes and Discussions
by Seppo J. Karrila, and Alex Karrila. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5111962
by J. West. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5115584
by P.-M. Binder, Dallas K. Tada, and Cooper B. Howlett. DOI: 10.1119/1.5115145
Computational Physics
by Siu A. Chin, and John Massey. DOI:听 10.1119/1.5111839
Book Reviews
by Robert Socolow American Journal of Physics 87, 606 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5110249
by Michael A. DuVernois. DOI: 10.1119/1.5098457
BOOKS RECEIVED
General Information, Resources for Authors, Reviewers, and Readers
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