In the early sixties, the space race between the American agency NASA and its Soviet counterpart involved the solution of several challenges. One of them was the ability of rendezvous between two orbiting spacecrafts. The Americans did the first successful rendezvous in the Gemini 8 mission commanded by Neil Armstrong, who years later would become the first man to set foot on the moon. Among the several interesting aspects of manned orbital rendezvous we cite the following paradox: considering two spacecrafts in the same near earth orbit, if one of them accelerates in order to catch up with the other, it will ultimately left behind. In this paper we analyze such counter intuitive results, which follows from the fact that altitude and velocity are correlated when we consider the equations governing free falling bodies, according Newton’s Universal Gravitational Law.
Keywords:
law of universal gravitation; space race; Hohmann transfer
