Animate Satellite Orbits Around a Planet
Charles Lee, California State University-Fullerton, Mathematics
Initial Publication Date: November 1, 2024
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Cite thisSummary
This activity is suitable for HS students if they are interested in creating satellite orbits around any planet in the solar system. This can be further developed for more advanced HS or college students to address solving ODEs, Orbital Mechanics, Rotation, MATLAB Animation, etc. Future work includes adding ground surface and line-of-sight in-view calculations.
Topics
Physics, Engineering, Mathematics
Grade Level
High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional
Readiness for Online Use
Online Ready
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Learning Goals
Concepts include
(1) understanding planet sizes, durations of the day, rotations, etc.
(2) ODE solver
(3) Geometry
(4) Animation
Context for Use
HS or college students can find this activity interesting
Description and Teaching Materials
This is a stand-alone activity. Students with little or no knowledge of MATLAB can run and modify to explore. Additional work is needed to speed up the process.
Animate script (MATLAB Live Script 344kB Nov1 24)
earth image
![[creative commons]](/images/creativecommons_16.png)
Provenance: Richard DeMark
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Richard DeMark
Provenance: Richard DeMark
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Assessment
Some polishing is still needed due to the time limit.
References and Resources
Some polishing is still needed due to the time limit.
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