Andrew Churchill
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Orbital Mechanics Sandbox

Two-body physics · Real units · Hand-rolled 2D and 3D renderers

A satellite orbits Earth and you fly it. Hover any thrust button to see the orbit you would end up with, shown as the dashed orange line, before you commit to the burn.

2D 3D
Altitude
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Speed
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Period
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Advanced
Apoapsis
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Periapsis
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Eccentricity
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Inclination
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T to apoapsis
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T to periapsis
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Δv spent
0 m/s
Energy
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Forces on spacecraft

Hover or hold a thrust button to preview the resulting orbit.

Thrust
Time
Click the view for keys & zoom
Preset
Challengesclick to open

    Rules of thumb

    • Thrust changes the far side of your orbit, not where you are now.
    • Speed up and the far side rises. Slow down and it drops.
    • To raise the low point, burn at the high point, and the other way round.
    • Burning where you're moving fastest, low down, gets you the most for your fuel.
    • A tilt burn pivots your orbit about the line where it already crosses the equator. That line is fixed, so the two points on it are the only places a burn lands you in the plane you actually wanted.
    • Tilting costs roughly 2 × your speed × sin(half the angle), so it scales with how fast you're going. A 30° tilt down at 400 km costs about 4 km/s, more than it takes to fly to geostationary altitude in the first place. The same 30° up at geostationary costs about 1.6 km/s. Turn where you're slow.
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