An article I read said we haven’t solved the three body problem and can’t predict the motion of 3 orbiting things in motion (2002 VE “Venus moon”) but we’ve been able to get the telescope to orbit just fine with itself the earth and the sun.. what’s the difference?
In: Physics
The James Webb Space Telescope is located in one of the Sun-Earth [Lagrange points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point). The Lagrange points are a set of equilibrium solutions of the restricted three-body problem, a version of the three body problem where the mass of the third object is so insignificant that its influence on the two other objects is not considered at all. The restricted three-body problem is mainly a two-body problem, for which there *do* exist analytic solutions.
Latest Answers