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The Nobel prize 100 years on

Orbits and astronauts

Why do astronauts on a spacewalk orbit the Earth and not their own spacecraft? The explanation involves the concept of a Hill sphere

An astronaut undertaking routine maintenance tasks on the International Space Station

The terms in bold link to topics in the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA A-level specifications, as well as the IB, Pre-U and SQA exam specifications.

To understand the orbits of astronauts, moons and planets we use Newton’s law of gravitation and ideas about rotational motion.

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The Nobel prize 100 years on

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