force of gravity attracts objects in space to each other —

causing the motion of one object to continually bend

Document to enhance Reading Efficiency toward another.
for JEE & NEET Aspirants
Throughout the cosmos, all sorts of celestial objects orbit
Instructions : Read below text carefully and try to each other. Moons and spacecraft orbit
involve yourself into it while reading and based on this, planets. Comets and asteroids orbit the sun — even other
planets. Our sun orbits the center of our galaxy, the Milky
you need to answer 20 questions in 6 minutes in the a Way. Galaxies orbit each other, too. Kepler’s laws
#INTERACTION Quiz 13 on the Physics Galaxy Telegram describing orbits hold true for all these objects across the
Channel sharp at 8:00pm TODAY (25-Sep-2022) universe.

NOTE : If you are reading this document later than 25- Kepler’s First Law: Ellipses
Sep-2022 then search the quiz on Telegram with the
term ‘#INTERACTION Quiz 13’ To describe how oval-like an ellipse is, scientists use the
word eccentricity (Ek-sen-TRIS-sih-tee). That eccentricity
is a number between 0 and 1. A perfect circle has an
Explainer: All about orbits eccentricity of 0. Orbits with eccentricities closer to 1 are
An orbit is the route that one space object repeatedly takes really stretched-out ovals.
around another.
The moon’s orbit around Earth has an eccentricity of
0.055. That’s almost a perfect circle. Comets have very
Even in ancient times, stargazers knew eccentric orbits. Halley’s Comet, which whizzes by Earth
that planets differed from stars. While stars always every 75 years, has an orbital eccentricity of 0.967.
appeared in the same general place in the night sky, planets
shifted their positions from night to night. They appeared
(It is possible for an object’s motion to have an eccentricity
to move across the backdrop of stars. Sometimes, planets
greater than 1. But such a high eccentricity describes an
even appeared to move backward. (This behavior is known
object whipping around another in a wide U-shape —
as retrograde motion.) Such strange movements across the
never to return. So, strictly speaking, it would not be
sky were hard to explain.
orbiting the object its path was bent around.)
Then, in the 1600s, Johannes Kepler identified
Ellipses are very important for planning a spacecraft’s
mathematical patterns in the planets’ movements.
orbit. If you want to send a spacecraft to Mars, you have to
Astronomers before him had known that the
remember that the spacecraft starts from Earth. That might
planets orbited, or moved around the sun. But Kepler was
sound silly at first. But when you launch a rocket, it will
the first to describe those orbits — correctly — with math.
naturally follow the ellipse of Earth’s orbit around the sun.
As if putting together a jigsaw puzzle, Kepler saw how the
To reach Mars, the spacecraft’s elliptical path around the
pieces of data fit together. He summed up the math of
sun will have to change to match Mars’ orbit.
orbital motion with three laws:
With some very complex math — that famous “rocket
1. The path a planet takes around the sun is an
science” — scientists can plan how fast and how high a
ellipse, not a circle. An ellipse is an oval shape.
rocket needs to launch a spacecraft. Once the spacecraft is
This means that sometimes a planet is closer to the
in orbit around Earth, a separate set of smaller engines
sun than at other times.
slowly widens the craft’s orbit around the sun. With careful
2. A planet’s speed changes as it moves along this
planning, the spacecraft’s new orbital ellipse will exactly
path. The planet speeds up when passing closest
match Mars’ at just the right time. That allows the
to the sun and slows as it gets farther away from
spacecraft to arrive at the Red Planet.
the sun.
3. Each planet orbits the sun at a different speed. The
more distant ones move more slowly than those When a spacecraft changes its orbit — such as when it
closer to the star. moves from one around Earth to one that will take it around
Mars (as in this illustration) — its engines must change the
Kepler still couldn’t explain why planets follow elliptical shape of its elliptical path.
paths and not circular ones. But his laws could predict
planets’ positions with incredible accuracy. Then, about 50 Kepler’s Second Law: Changing speeds
years later, physicist Isaac Newton explained the
mechanism for why Kepler’s laws worked: gravity. The
The point where a planet’s orbit comes closest to the sun
is its perihelion. The term comes from the Greek peri, or
near, and helios, or sun.
Earth reaches its perihelion in early January. (This may
seem strange to people in the Northern Hemisphere, who
experience winter in January. But Earth’s distance from
the sun is not the cause of our seasons. That’s due to the tilt
of Earth’s axis of rotation.) At perihelion, Earth is moving
fastest in its orbit, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) per
second. By early July, Earth’s orbit is at its farthest point
from the sun. Then, Earth is traveling most slowly along
its orbital path — about 29 kilometers (18 miles) per
second.
Planets are not the only orbiting objects that speed up and
slow down like this. Whenever something in orbit gets
closer to the object it’s orbiting, it feels a stronger
gravitational pull. As a result, it speeds up.
Scientists try to use this extra boost when launching
spacecraft to other planets. For instance, a probe sent to
Jupiter might fly past Mars on the way. As the spacecraft
gets closer to Mars, the planet’s gravity causes the probe
to speed up. That gravitational boost flings the spacecraft
toward Jupiter much faster than it would travel on its own.
This is called the slingshot effect. Using it can save a lot of
fuel. Gravity does some of the work, so the engines need
to do less.
Kepler’s Third Law: Distance and Speed
At an average distance of 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion
miles), the sun’s gravitational pull on Neptune is strong
enough to hold the planet in orbit. But it’s much weaker
than the sun’s tug on Earth, which is a mere 150 million
kilometers (93 million miles) from the sun. So, Neptune
travels along its orbit more slowly than Earth does. It
cruises around the sun at about 5 kilometers (3 miles) per
second. Earth zooms around the sun at about 30 kilometers
(19 miles) per second.
Since more distant planets travel more slowly around
wider orbits, they take much longer to complete one orbit.
This time span is known as a year. On Neptune, it lasts
about 60,000 Earth days. On Earth, far closer to the sun, a
year is just a bit more than 365 days long. And Mercury,
the planet closest to the sun, wraps up its own year every
88 Earth days.
This relationship between an orbiting object’s distance and
its speed affects how fast satellites zoom around Earth.
Most satellites — including the International Space
Station — orbit about 300 to 800 kilometers (200 to 500
miles) above Earth’s surface. Those low-flying satellites
complete one orbit every 90 minutes or so.
Some very high orbits — around 35,000 kilometers
(20,000 miles) off the ground — cause satellites to move
more slowly. In fact, those satellites move slowly enough
to match the speed of Earth’s rotation. These craft are
in geosynchronous orbit. Since they seem to stand still
above a single country or region, these satellites are often
used to track weather or relay communications.
On collisions and ‘parking’ spots
Space may be huge, but everything in it is always in
motion. Occasionally, two orbits cross one another. And
that can lead to collisions.
Some places are packed with objects on crisscrossing
orbits. Consider all of the space junk orbiting Earth. These
bits of debris are constantly colliding with each other —
and occasionally with important spacecraft. Predicting
where potentially hazardous pieces of debris are headed in
this swarm can be quite complex. But it’s worth it, if
scientists can foresee a collision and move a spacecraft out
of the way.
Sometimes, the target of a potential collision may not be
able to divert its path. Consider a meteor or other space
rock whose orbit may put it on a collision course with
Earth. If we’re lucky, that incoming rock will burn up in
Earth’s atmosphere. But if the boulder is too big to fully
disintegrate on its way through the air, it could smash into
Earth. And that could prove disastrous — just as it was
for the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. To head off these
problems, scientists are investigating how to divert the
orbit of the incoming space rocks. That takes an especially
challenging number of orbital calculations.
Saving satellites — and potentially warding off the
apocalypse — are not the only reasons to understand
orbits.
In the 1700s, mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange
identified a special set of points in space around the sun
and any given planet. At these points, the gravitational pull
of the sun and the planet strike a balance. As a result, a
spacecraft parked in that spot can stay there without
burning much fuel. Today, these are known as Lagrange
points.
One of those points, known as L2, is especially useful for
space telescopes that need to stay very cold. The
new James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, takes
advantage of that.
Orbiting at L2, JWST can point away from both the Earth
and sun. This allows the telescope to make observations in
space. And since L2 is about 1.5 million kilometers (1
million miles) away from Earth, it is far enough from both
the Earth and the sun to keep JWST’s instruments
extremely cool. But L2 also allows JWST to stay in
constant communication with the ground. As JWST orbits
the sun at L2, it will always be the same distance from
Earth — so the telescope can send its stunning views home
while facing out into the universe – end of article !
Article Source –
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer
-all-about-orbits