{"id":173,"date":"2013-11-26T21:48:09","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T21:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/2013\/11\/26\/26th-november-2013-sol-466\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:28:38","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:28:38","slug":"26th-november-2013-sol-466","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/2013\/11\/26\/26th-november-2013-sol-466\/","title":{"rendered":"26th November 2013 Sol 466"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\" \">Two years after launch from Cape Canaveral we have been\u00a0slowed up temporarily by a\u00a0minor short circuit, but are now getting back to analyses and driving.<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">Every 26 months Mars and Earth are relatively close e.g. 55 million km (!), and\u00a0 so a\u00a0Hohman transfer orbit can take\u00a0 place.\u00a0 Thus it is no coincidence that MAVEN has just been launched.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">A Hohman transfer orbit is the most fuel efficient way of getting between the 2 planets.\u00a0 The Hohman transfer orbit is\u00a0part of an ellipse with the Sun at one focus within the ellipse, and the 2 planet&#8217;s orbits just touching the ellipse.\u00a0 This is\u00a0based on Keplers&#8217; Laws, for orbiting bodies in the Solar System.\u00a0 Kepler was a 17th Century astronomer.\u00a0 He worked out that:<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">\u2022All planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus within it\u00a0(his first law)<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">\u00a0\u2022A line joining a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times (his second law)<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">\u2022The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit (his 3rd law).<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\" \">\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years after launch from Cape Canaveral we have been\u00a0slowed up temporarily by a\u00a0minor short circuit, but are now getting back to analyses and driving. Every 26 months Mars and Earth are relatively close e.g. 55 million km (!), and\u00a0 so a\u00a0Hohman transfer orbit can take\u00a0 place.\u00a0 Thus it is no coincidence that MAVEN has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":649,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/mars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}