Reply to post: Re: Orbit numbers

India's Chandrayaan-2 and Vikram lander split amicably above Moon, SpaceX hops over Texas

FrogsAndChips Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Orbit numbers

Bear in mind that the actual orbit is around the barycentre of the two bodies and so they're all fairly close to being circular

Err, given that the moon outweighs the spacecraft by a factor of 10^20, for all purposes the barycenter of the bodies IS the center of the moon, you wouldn't need that to assess the eccentricity of orbits. Besides, my calculations give an eccentricity of 0.28 for the final phase orbit (110x36), which is not what I call close to circular.

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