The explanations of the moon rotating while always keeping one side facing earth are still perplexing to me, but I hadn’t thought about how fast it’s actually orbiting us. I know the Apollo rockets traveled 24,000 MPH, but how were the astronauts able to safely land the lunar module on a body moving so fast? The lunar module wouldn’t have been able to slowly descend to the surface, it would have to race to catch it. There’s no air resistance to make astronauts or moon dust fly off, but wouldn’t there still be an insane amount of g-force at such high speeds?
In: Physics
> The lunar module wouldn’t have been able to slowly descend to the surface, it would have to race to catch it
The Earth is orbiting the Sun at almost 70000mph. That doesn’t make it difficult for planes to land.
Yes, the Apollo spacecraft would have to “catch up” with the moon. But the velocity it has to reach to do so is actually a lot less than what’s needed to leave Earth in the first place. As the spacecraft travels from the Earth to the moon, gravity is slowing it down. By the time it arrives at the moon, a relatively small capture burn is all that’s needed to put it in orbit.
Because there is no air on the moon, the spacecraft cannot use parachutes to slow its descent, but it can slow down using the engines in order to make a soft landing.
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