I'm watching #Artemis speed decreasing as it continues to be pulled back steadily by earth. Seems like it's just never gonna get to the moon.
But I assume, at some point, the moon starts to pull it towards it faster?
But also the moon is not directly in front of it.
Tracker: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/trackartemis/
How they calculate the trajectories now, with computers, is baffling. How they did it in the 60's I'll never understand.
Oh, hang on. Orion is OUTSIDE the moon's orbit now, and the moon is actually helping to slow it down and pull it back?
The mechanics of this are mind boggling.
@ross Play #KerbalSpaceProgram for a while, you'll get a much better understanding of the (very counterintuitive) nature of #OrbitalDynamics :)
Oh, and how did they calculate things in the #1960s? While final trajectories were analyzed with (compute-intensive) #NBodySimulations, rough trajectories were created with "#PatchedConics", which basically sort of converts a trajectory into a #geometry problem.
Ross Wintle
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦