Saturday, July 28, 2018

newtonian mechanics - Satellite in Elliptical orbit


When finding the period of a satellite orbiting the earth we equate the centripetal force to the gravitational force


$$\frac{mv^2}{r} = \frac{-GMm}{r^2}$$ If I understood well the $r$ cancels into the $r^2$ because the distance from the earth at any point on the orbit equals the radius of the orbit. Now what if we have an ellipse instead of a circle?


And by the way why does Kepler's $1^{st}$ law say In elliptical orbits




No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...