{"id":118621,"date":"2021-07-14T18:33:05","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T13:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=118621"},"modified":"2021-07-15T19:15:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T13:45:31","slug":"suborbital-flight-fast-enough-to-reach-space-not-stay-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/suborbital-flight-fast-enough-to-reach-space-not-stay-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Suborbital flight: Fast enough to reach space, not stay there"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-fast-enough-to-reach-space-not-stay-there-7400009\/\">Indian Express<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h5><strong>What is the News?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and five others undertook a trip to the \u201cedge of space\u201d, and reached an altitude of 85 km from Earth before returning. Such a trip is called a Suborbital Flight.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>What is Suborbital Flight?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Suborbital Flights <\/strong>occur when a spacecraft reaches space, but its velocity is such that it cannot orbit the Earth once they reach there.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>How does Suborbital Flight work?<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>When an object <\/strong>travels at a horizontal speed of about 28,000 km\/hr or more, it goes into orbit.\u00a0<strong>Satellites need to reach <\/strong>that threshold speed in order to orbit Earth.<\/li>\n<li><b>S<\/b>uch a satellite would be accelerating towards the Earth due to gravity, but its horizontal movement is fast enough to offset the downward motion so that it moves along a circular path.<\/li>\n<li><strong>This is because any object <\/strong>traveling slower than 28,000 km\/hr must eventually return to Earth.<\/li>\n<li><strong>However, <\/strong>Unity spacecraft traveled far enough to reach the \u201cedge of space\u201d. These are suborbital flights because they will not be traveling fast enough to orbit Earth once they reach there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Such a trip <\/strong>allows space travelers to experience a few minutes of \u201cweightlessness\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Analogy of Suborbital Flight:<\/strong><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>For an analogy, <\/strong>consider a cricket ball thrown into the air. Given that no human hand can give it a speed of 28,000 km\/hr (about 8 m\/sec), the ball will fly in an arc until its entire kinetic energy is swapped with potential energy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>At that instant, <\/strong>it will lose its vertical motion momentarily, before returning to Earth under the influence of gravity.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A suborbital flight <\/strong>is like this cricket ball, but traveling fast enough to reach the \u201cedge of space\u201d and yet without enough horizontal velocity to go into orbit.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>If an object travels <\/strong>as fast as 40,000 km\/hr, it will achieve escape velocity and never return to Earth.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Indian Express What is the News? Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and five others undertook a trip to the \u201cedge of space\u201d, and reached an altitude of 85 km from Earth before returning. Such a trip is called a Suborbital Flight. What is Suborbital Flight? Suborbital Flights occur when a spacecraft reaches space, but&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/suborbital-flight-fast-enough-to-reach-space-not-stay-there\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Suborbital flight: Fast enough to reach space, not stay there<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1738,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-science-and-technology-daily-factly-articles","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704926358},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}