Quote:
Originally Posted by flatbutt
Webb is on it's way!
|
So I wake my ask up at 6:30am Christmas morning to watch the launch. That was a scintillating 20 seconds as the clouds ate it up from view.
Anyhoo, I find this NASA website "Where is Webb" It gives current data about speed, distance traveled and distance remaining, percent complete. Basic stuff.
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
The orbit where Webb is headed is Lagrange (point) 2. Now Lagrange is pretty cool and has to to with gravitational balance and i am still reading about it. I think it means Webb will be a million miles towards Mars but stay in lock step with the Earth around the Sun.
Here's the diagram:
Here's the reason for the post. The (a) rocket has to get up to circa 17k MPH to orbit. I'm assuming it did that. Now it's on the way to the L2 point, more than half way to the moon.
This morning it was moving away from earth at 1.0551 miles per second.
That's slightly over 3,600MPH. What happened to the 17K MPH?
Also the spacecraft is slowing down. Now it's 0.93 miles per second at 5:00PM.
What gives with the "slow" speeds? I'm guessing way easier to slow down?
Apollo took a couple days to get to the Moon so they weren't going 17k MPH either. Correct?