The spaceship was 250 km above Earth when it entered the preset orbit. Moving at high speed, the spaceship was not running on a circular orbit, but elliptical with its altitude varying from 250 km ...

While ancient astronomers thought planetary orbits were circular, they didn't think they were simple circles. One of the consequences of elliptical orbits is that planets orbit not about the ...

Elliptical and circular orbits are stable, so of course all the planets are characterized by these kinds of eccentricities. In a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit, however, an object approaches a ...

From the June 2010 issue How difficult is it to launch an artificial satellite into a circular orbit versus an elliptical one? Is the final altitude of the orbit a key factor?

It was little more than four centuries ago that German mathematician Johannes Kepler discovered that our planet — and others — orbits the sun not along a circular path but along an elliptical ...

A newly discovered exoplanet three times bigger than Jupiter has been discovered orbiting its star in a bizarre, elliptical orbit, slingshot-style — and astronomers are excited. While ellipti… ...

China's second manned spaceship changes its elliptical orbit to a circular at 3:50 PM Wednesday afternoon. It is a very important step in telemetric control work, Dr. Liu Yingchun, a spacecraft ...