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Instructions
In this game you must man a
spacecraft to dock on a satellite orbiting the Earth. In order to
do this you must maneuver the spacecraft until it gets within the
docking range of the satellite. To get into the docking range, the
spacecraft has to be inside the circle that is labeled as
“satellite”. However, moving into the docking range is
not all that you have to do; you have to have the right velocity as
well, which is indicated by the green lines. The velocity of the
spacecraft must be very close to the velocity of the satellite, or
else the spacecraft will not dock. To read about orbits, check out
our gravitation page.
The keys for maneuvering the
spacecraft are “,” (comma) to rotate counter-clockwise,
“.” (period) to rotate clockwise, and spacebar to
accelerate. You can change parameters for the game using the
options below the applet. Just type in new numbers, and click
“Send”. Click “Reset to Defaults” to return
to the original values. If you wish to get the data that was
previously sent, click “Get Values”.
Depending on the satellite’s
distance from the Earth, its orbital velocity will vary in order
for the orbit to be circular. If you change the distance between
the satellite and the sun, the orbital velocity will be
automatically changed; however you can override this by deselecting
the checkbox for automatically calculating velocity and changing it
manually. Experiment with the other options below the game. You may
enter mathematical expressions in the text boxes; for example if
you want to double the distance you can put “*2” at the
end of the number and the values will change. |
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| This page was created by Thinkquest team
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