Physics Asked by abnry on February 10, 2021
Suppose an artificial satellite is launched to orbit the moon. Ignore 3-body problem issues, just assume it follows a roughly titled elliptical orbit relative to the plane cutting through earth’s equator.
The moon is tidally locked to the earth–that is, the moon’s surface itself rotates with the same period the moon rotates around the earth.
My question is will this apply to the artificial satellite orbiting the moon? That is, will the orientation of the satellite’s orbiting plane remain fixed or will it also rotate in the moon’s 28 day cycle?
No, because orbital speed is just dependent on the orbital altitude. Which means that you can find the orbital altitude that corresponds to the same effect as the spin-orbit lock of the earth-moon system, but at an arbitrary altitude that would not be the case.
Answered by José Andrade on February 10, 2021
If we ignore other bodies, the orbital plane will remain fixed. It will not turn along with the Moon as the Moon orbits. That would require a force acting on the satellite which is not in the orbital plane.
Orbits do precess in real-world examples, but that is under the influence of other bodies (or of uneven features of the body orbited), and it is usually on a much slower timescale than what we're talking about here.
Answered by Kristoffer Sjöö on February 10, 2021
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