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
Same way you can walk to the bathroom on an airplane going 500 mph.
The orbiter is placed in an orbit around the earth that matches the moon. All objects in the same orbit travel at the same speed, so once it is there the moon is practically standing still. Then the orbiter changes its trajectory slightly so it is orbiting the moon. After that, it is “just” a matter of slowing your velocity, which causes your orbit to shrink until you reach the surface.
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