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Isn't the satellite (payload) and the 2nd stage in the same orbit, with the 2nd stage pretty much following the satellite? Until such time the satellite fires off its own rocket engine for any course correction.2nd stage need not return, having pushed to escape velocity. Space is big, it’s not coming back. Likely in an eccentric solar orbit now, either eventually burn up or not meet another body for a very long time.
Yes. The satellite does have its own engine and will still be accelerating and maneuvering. Someone who likely knows said the second stage is in a heliocentric orbit. So little need to do anything about it. It's the stuff in LEO to MEO that needs to get cleared out.Isn't the satellite (payload) and the 2nd stage in the same orbit, with the 2nd stage pretty much following the satellite? Until such time the satellite fires off its own rocket engine for any course correction.
someone more informed about such things pointed out that a kick stage would add more mass that could instead be used as fuel
It's the stuff in LEO to MEO that needs to get cleared out.
Impact! It looked dead center. Now they will study the results of that impact and whether it caused a change in direction.
Turns out they had another camera in space - possibly much closer than ground telescopes - watching the collision. Atleast that is how I understood this.I was wondering if they could have sent two probes - joined together - separating at around 1 minute mark, with the first one firing a small thruster and crashes ahead, and the 2nd one captures the video of that crash
Fifteen days before impact, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to capture images of DART’s impact and of the asteroid’s resulting cloud of ejected matter. In tandem with the images returned by DRACO, LICIACube’s images are intended to provide a view of the collision’s effects to help researchers better characterize the effectiveness of kinetic impact in deflecting an asteroid. Because LICIACube doesn’t carry a large antenna, images will be downlinked to Earth one by one in the coming weeks.
I'm waiting for the Scott Manley report...
Speed relative to what?What speed was the asteroid travelling?
hmm.. relative to this DART probe? Sun?Speed relative to what?
Google “orbital velocity of asteroid belt”. I found an online reference for you:What speed was the asteroid travelling?
The average orbital speed of a main-belt asteroid is 17.9 km/s, the orbital speed of Ceres. Ceres has a pretty typical orbit and makes up a third of the Belt by mass.
Asteroids that have significantly eccentric orbits move faster that their average when they are near their perihelion and slower than their average when they are near their aphelion, in accordance with Kepler’s Second Law of planetary motion.
Asteroids whose orbit has a semi-major axis longer than Ceres’ have average speed slower than Ceres’ average speed, and asteroids whose orbit has a semi-major axis shorter than Ceres’ have average speed faster than Ceres’ average speed, in accordance with Kepler’s third law of planetary motion.