Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

11. Interplanetary Flight

Course subject(s) 2. Orbital Mechanics

In this lecture Ir. R. Noomen talks about interplanetary flight. He start off by talking about transfer orbits, reaching the Hohmann transfer. Hohmann transfers for interplanetary flight are different however from those just in earth orbit. He then talkt about the different escape velocities needed in order to travel to different planets in our solar system. When transfering to a different planet, timing is essential due to the different periods which planets orbit the sun. The next subject is a fast trajectory, this would mean expending more energy to reach a destination faster. Finally the time it takes to make a round trip to another planet is explained.

Creative Commons License
Flight & Orbital Mechanics by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/flight-orbital-mechanics/.
Back to top
[sg_popup id=6]