Robots, Monsters & Space Toys

Nasa Apollo

Nasa Apollo
How does NASA determine the SPEED of spacecraft on missions to the MOON (Apollo, etc.)?

I’d like as technical an answer as possible. Legit websites are acceptable.

How did NASA (back home in mission control) determine the SPEED of the spacecraft going to and from the moon? What instrument or technique was used to find out the astronauts’ speed? Whats was the margin of error of said techniques?

Technical replies OK. Math OK.

anagAH.

They didn’t have GPS yet, but they used the same principles. Radio signals from three stations on Earth go to the ship and back, telling how far the ship is from each station. If clocks on the three stations are synchronized, you can calculate the location of the ship. Doppler shift tells the relative velocity of the ship.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2011 at 3:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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