Why Spacecraft Are Using These Crazy Routes To The Moon - Weak Stability and Ballistic Capture.
315,553
Published 2022-12-19
They use the theory of weak stability boundaries and ballistic capture in the 3 body problem, to make this possible, and it's an idea which was first discovered in the early 1990's and has now become the main route for modern spacecraft.
Some of the orbit visualizations use Universe Sandbox
universesandbox.com/
Follow me on Twitter for more updates:
twitter.com/DJSnM
I have a discord server where I regularly turn up:
discord.gg/zStmKbM
If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon
www.patreon.com/scottmanley
All Comments (21)
-
Hitchhikers Guide to Lunar Orbit
-
I’m an orbital mechanics engineer at ESA and I wouldn’t have explained it better 👏🏼👏🏼
-
This is mathematically and physically beautiful and I cannot imagine the happiness the original scientists felt when putting all of this together
-
Danuri is Korea’s first lunar satellite! It wasn’t originally planned to do these harder, efficient orbit maneuvers but they kept adding new equipments and sensors to the satellite to a point where they had no options but to take the harder approach. Crazy considering that this is our first spacecraft to the moon. Anyways, huge thanks to Scott for covering space launches and projects from Korea in your videos!
-
Did my PhD on ballistic capture, worked with Ed Belbruno at Princeton University, and I'm currently an active researcher on this topic. Yet, I'm always fascinated by this concept as the first days I started studying it.
-
It's kinda crazy that only 50 meters of dV is enough to go past Moon to the edge of Earth's sphere of influence.
-
Awesome stuff, n-body physics interactions are fascinating. Have you heard of the Interplanetary Transport Network? It's the concept that all these chaotic interactions create 'pathways' between the Lagrange points of pretty much every body in the solar system. From the Moon to Jupiter, without a single drop of fuel. You'll just need a LOT of patience. (for everything to line up, and for all the natural gravity assists...)
-
Thinking of the Lagrange points as low effective potential "portals" between Hill spheres is an amazing insight. Thanks for sharing it. I've seen (and derived) the effective potential contour maps many, many times in my life, but never thought of the implications in quite this way. It certainly makes the captures, whether planned or accidental, so much more intuitive.
-
Who would've thunk that rocket science was this complex
-
I really need to try one of these with the Principia mod one of these days. Amazing stuff and the 3D diagram of gravity around the lagrange points really makes everything click into place.
-
I know someone who worked on the Lunar Flashlight mission, learning more about it is so cool :O
-
I never thought of using Universe Sandbox to reverse engineer orbits like that. Now I have something new to play with. Thanks, Scott. I also am quite surprised that these techniques were developed only very recently.
-
I took a class this last semester that focused entirely on finding periodic and quasi-periodic orbits and orbital transfers in the circular restricted 3 body problem, as well as extending these results to find solutions in ephemeris models. Fascinating stuff and really cool to see it used in real life!!
-
I've struggled to visualize how bodies are captured into orbits without delta-V. Now it's crystal clear. Thank you.
-
I'd be really interested to hear much mass (as a percentage of the spacecraft's mass) these maneuvers save the craft's designers. Seems like it has to be substantial for the time and effort they spend to perform it successfully! The calculation and risk assessment that must go into it is mind-boggling.
-
I think if you did a video on coordinate transformations, you'd have enough material to just teach a university orbital mechanics course. Certainly better than the one I got...
-
Every time I read or hear somebody proposing that a planet "captured" a passing body and made it a moon, I think of the delicate - and extremely unlikely - orbital mechanics required to make that possible. You'd need some sort of decelerating collision, at just the right time and place, to act as an "insertion burn". (Anybody think that tidal forces could enable the process, given enough time?)
-
I remember reading about Bellbruno's work a little over a decade ago. I hunted him down online and emailed him to ask if it was possible to recreate this kind of orbit on the space flight simulator called Orbiter. He actually wrote me back with all kinds of diagrams and explanations. I still haven't been able to totally recreate it on Orbiter but your video helps out a lot. Thanks.
-
That is amazing. Thank you Ed Belbruno for discovering these orbits. Genius!
-
Kudos to your acknowledgment of Ed Bellbruno and his contribution to object deployment in the space environment.
