Translate:
English
Chinese (S)
Chinese (T)
Croatian
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Serbian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Additional
orbital decay
English Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia
Download this dictionary
Orbital decay
In
orbital mechanics
,
decay
is a process that leads to gradual decrease of the
distance
between two
orbiting
bodies at their closest approach (the
periapsis
) over many orbital periods. These orbiting bodies can be a
planet
and its
satellite
, a
star
and any object orbiting it, or components of any
binary system
. The orbital decay can be caused by a multitude of
mechanical
,
gravitational
, and
electromagnetic
effects. For bodies in a
low Earth orbit
, the most significant effect is the atmospheric drag.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
© This article uses material from
Wikipedia
®
and is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License
and under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License