A friend told me that with the current engineering we cannot send a satellite to the sun (just reaching it, not survival) because we would have to nullify the velocity of earth with respect to the sun. I’m not sure I understand and not sure if that is true.
In: Physics
Imagine you’re in a car travelling at 30mph. (Obviously you’re in a kid’s seat because you’re 5.) You open the window and drop a ball. You might expect the ball to fall straight down. What will actually happen is that the ball will fall, but in an arc. This is because it’s already going forwards at 30mph, and its momentum carries it forwards. To make it fall straight down, you’d actually need to throw it backwards at 30mph to cancel the speed of the car.
Probes are the same. If you launch one from Earth, it’ll want to orbit the Sun along with Earth. To make it head right for the Sun, we need to throw it ‘backwards’.
Now you might think we could just fire it at the Sun. But that’s like throwing the ball down. It will keep going forward, but will bounce higher. Similarly, firing the probe at the Sun will still make it miss, but it’ll end up in an even bigger orbit!
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