The phase angle will be something between 0 and 360 degrees, or 180 and -180 degrees depending on how you measure it. Therefore, we simply look at the angle between the target and our own ship: this is the phase angle. In this case, we are not particularly interested in the individual phases of our orbiting objects, since the orbital phase only matters to us as a relative term. In the case of orbits, the natural quantity to measure is angle of rays connecting the orbiting object and the center point of the orbit. The phase is usually 0, or a number larger than 0 and smaller than the period - you can think of it as measuring how much of one period is complete at an arbitrary starting point. In physics, periodic movement is described such that there is a period (how long it takes to complete one iteration), and there is also a parameter called "phase" which describes what part of the current iteration is complete. However, there is no direct way to make you "advance" along your orbit without changing the orbit itself - if you try to thrust forward you will change the radius of your orbit. It is relatively simple to alter the shape of the orbit: You fire thrusters for so long at such point, and it immediately bends the rest of your orbit. However, this is not enough: You must also be at the same part of the orbit at the same time. Naturally, if you want to be at the same place at the same time with a target, it is necessary to have the same orbit. But, there is a problem - when you are over the western hemisphere the target is over the eastern hemisphere, and you are literally a world apart at all times! Of course, the problem is that you are at a different phase than your target. You have the exact same orbital trajectories. Now, let's say you've matched orbits with your target. It will be very difficult to rendezvous a target on equatorial orbit when you are on a polar orbit! Again, the process of aligning orbits is described elsewhere, so I will leave that as an exercise to the reader. Second, you need to be on the same orbital plane as the target. There are ways of achieving this, they are described elsewhere so I won't go into them.
You want to meet this object.įirst you need to be orbiting the same body as the target. Let's say there is an object in stable orbit (everything becomes much messier if the target orbit intersects the atmosphere) around something.
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