Am 26.01.2018 um 18:02 schrieb Le_Forgeron:
> Le 20/01/2018 à 17:09, Kenneth a écrit :
>> So it follows that the
>> Space shuttle and the apple-- in the same orbit-- are going at the same speed or
>> velocity. (If their speeds were different, one would head further off into
>> space-- attaining a higher orbit, or maybe a more eccentric one?)
> 
> Which remind me of a curiosity: if the apple goes faster, it goes
> higher... and performs then less revolutions than the station.
> 
> When you're a satellite, if you want to move ahead of another one, you
> need to SLOW to be able to jump from behind to the front.

Actually it depends how quickly you want to achieve this maneuver. If
you're in low earth orbit, have plenty of time on your hand, and/or have
a large distance to catch up, you may indeed want to decelerate in the
current direction of travel, wait for the peculiarities of orbital
mechanics to carry you the desired distance ahead, and then re-inject
into the original orbit, as it's probably the most fuel-efficient maneuver.

However, such a maneuver requires at least one full orbital revolution
to complete. Even in low earth orbit, that's about 1.5 hours.

Also, I guess the precision for such a maneuver may be comparatively low.


If you want to achieve the maneuver faster, you need to accelerate more
downward or even forward. For instance, in the final phase of docking
two spacecraft, orbital maneuvering is actually pretty intuitive.

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