Astrodynamics
Fundamentals of astrodynamics; the two-body orbital initial-value and boundary-value problems with applications to space vehicle navigation and guidance for lunar and planetary missions with applications to space vehicle navigation and guidance for lunar and planetary missions including both powered flight and midcourse maneuvers. Topics include celestial mechanics, Kepler's problem, Lambert's problem, orbit determination, multi-body methods, mission planning, and recursive algorithms for space navigation. Selected applications from the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and Mars exploration programs.
Fall 2008
This course covers the fundamentals of astrodynamics, focusing on the two-body orbital initial-value and boundary-value problems with applications to space vehicle navigation and guidance for lunar and planetary missions, including both powered flight and midcourse maneuvers. Other topics include celestial mechanics, Kepler's problem, Lambert's problem, orbit determination, multi-body methods, mission planning, and recursive algorithms for space navigation. Selected applications from the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and Mars exploration programs are also discussed.
Readings
- Battin, Richard. An Introduction to the Mathematics and Methods of Astrodynamics . Revised ed. Reston, VA: AIAA, 1999. ISBN: 9781563473425.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: 18.03 G (Spring) 3-0-9 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2008
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.