Wouldn’t when we land on the moon, the earth would still be in motion bc of the orbit, and so whenever we exit the orbit of the moon (Which was orbiting the earth) the earth would still be in a constant orbit moving at high speeds, how did we calculate and intercept earth in said orbit.
In: Planetary Science
The moon is orbiting the Earth. As the Earth moves through the solar system, the moon moves with it. Think of it like 2 runners on a track, moving at the same speed. It’s going to be relatively easy to toss a ball back and forth between each other because you’re moving the same way.
It gets harder with other planets, they still mostly are moving the same direction, but your speeds are way different and your distances are much greater. Way more chances for things to go wrong, and being off by .01% doesn’t matter much when you’re moving a foot, but if you’re moving a few hundred thousand miles, that little error will make a big difference.
The math to figure this all out has been around for a long time, the difficulty was more on the engineering and technology side of things. And of course, getting it wrong is pretty disastrous.
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