Word of the Week: Orbital Inclination
The angle at which an object’s orbit around a central body is tilted in comparison to a reference plane.
Asteroid Bennu orbits the Sun at a 6-degree inclination from the plane of Earth’s orbit. In 2017, OSIRIS-REx executed a maneuver that used Earth’s gravity to boost itself onto Bennu’s orbital plane.
Credit: University of Arizona
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