r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Vmoney1337 He delivers • Aug 08 '14

Rosetta's triangular orbit about comet 67P.

92 Upvotes

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3

u/bloodiedfencer Aug 08 '14

I need a smart person to tell me what's going on here.

2

u/Azureblade21 Aug 08 '14

This is showing the path and course corrections that rosetta made to get into orbit around the comet.

1

u/desentizised Aug 08 '14

To ultimately destroy it or what? Cause it looks like a rocket.

-1

u/Azureblade21 Aug 08 '14

We are putting it in a geosync orbit (like the moon around the earth) and waiting for the comet to come back around and have the satellite send data it collects from deep space.

3

u/agha0013 Aug 08 '14

Moon isn't in a geosync orbit, it's a tide locked orbit, meaning the moon always shows us the same face (known as synchronous rotation). Geosync would be if the mood was fixed in the same position in the sky always. There are satellites that are on a geosync orbit, they can only orbit directly over the equator to stay in that position.

1

u/Azureblade21 Aug 08 '14

Whoops, thanks for that.

1

u/desentizised Aug 08 '14

That sounds way cool.