Team Number: 3
Team Number: 3
School Name: Hawaii Desert Academy
Area of Science: Celestial Mechanics
Project Title: Swing-by Effect on Spacecraft Velocity
Our proposal is to find the increase in velocity of a spacecraft that does a "swing-by" of a planetary body. For those of you that have seen the movie Armageddon, the scene where the shuttle "slingshots" around the moon in order to increase speed is quite intriguing. This is the type of intrigue that inspired our investigation. Our question is: Just how much speed is gained by swinging around a planetary body?
The relevance of this concept has many benefits to the space program. For example, Voyager2 did a swing-by of Jupiter in order to increase its speed to reach Saturn. The increase was a whopping 35,700 mph!!!! Imagine what this can do for our interplanetary fuel economy!
Understanding of the following concepts is
crucial to developing a solid mathematical model. First, an underlying
concept is that energy is conserved in the meeting of the two space bodies
-meaning the craft and the planet. Here is a list of basic physical laws
that apply.
Kinetic energy = Mass * Velocity^2
Momentum = Mass * Velocity
Here you can see that the mass of the planet is
a very important factor in the resulting velocity.
Our investigation has revealed what everyone already knows....Boy, does
NASA have their work cut out for them! Here are some things that we will
assume are not factors, although on some small scale they are:
The velocity of the planet is not affected by the swing-by
The mass of the craft has no effect on the planet
The approach velocity of the craft is fixed The craft is constructed in
such a way to withstand all extreme forces and temperatures
We will write an interactive program that requires the user to select a planet of choice and an angle of approach. In other words, which planet will they swing-by and at which angle? Our program will use the known masses and velocities of the planets to calculate the velocity of reproach of the craft. The end result ......mucha velocidad!!!
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