Book Details
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I. What's Got You Down? (Let's Talk About Gravity)
1. How to Find an Exoplanet: TESS and the Geometry of Orbits
2. A Seemingly Magical Orbit: JWST and
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I. What's Got You Down? (Let's Talk About Gravity)
1. How to Find an Exoplanet: TESS and the Geometry of Orbits
2. A Seemingly Magical Orbit: JWST and Gravitation
3. From a Relativistic Point of View: Hubble and Relativity
4. Initial Conditions: Voyager and Our Place in Space
II. Let's GO
5. We Are 'Go' For Launch! Sounding Rockets and the Physics of Launch
6. To Mars We Go: Perseverance and the Physics of Orbit
7. A Balance of Forces: Dragonfly and Newton's Laws
Interlude — The Speed You Need, Part 1: Orbits
III. There's No Free Lunch, But There Might be Some Tasty Snacks
8. To Shift a Space Rock: DART and the momentum of collisions
9. Gravitational Slingshots: Psyche and angular momentum
10. Spaceflight's Not-Quite-Free Lunch: Apollo and Conservation of Energy
Interlude — The Speed You Need, Part 2: Escape
IV. Rockets Can't Surf, But They Still Need Waves
11. How to Phone Home From Space: the Deep Space Network and waves
12. Beyond the Rainbow: DAVINCI and the electromagnetic spectrum
13. Seeing the Unseeable: Chandra and optics
V. Look Deeper, and Dream On
14. Sailing on Starlight: Two Solar Sail Spacecraft and Photon physics
15. Spaceflight, Differently: Solar Electric Propulsion Reframes the Rocket Equation
16. Doing the Impossible: Parker Solar Probe and Radiation
VI. Appendices
17. The Metric System
18. The Math of Gravity, Once More
Afterword
Notes on Sources
Bibliography