Joe Alexander, Ranarauna T, Thitiya Tedsapun

Orbits Lab Report

1: We were trying to answer the question “how does changing the mass and velocity of a
satellite and the mass of the object it revolves around affect the nature of the satellite’s orbit?”.
We were trying to answer this question to learn about how orbits can change and how they
change when using certain variables.

2. To answer this question, we used an online simulator and collected data. We did this to
specifically figure out how certain numbers fit into the eccentricity and size of an orbit.

3. Our argument states that increasing the satellite or sun mass decreases the size of the orbit (but
not the eccentricity), and increasing the satellite velocity increases the size of the orbit and the
eccentricity.