Back مسار مكافئ Arabic Trajectòria parabòlica Catalan Trayectoria parabólica Spanish مسیر سهموی Persian Paraabelirata Finnish Trajectoire parabolique French Պարաբոլիկ հետագիծ Armenian Traiettoria parabolica Italian 放物線軌道 Japanese Parabolisk bane NB

Parabolic trajectory

This article is about a class of Kepler orbits. For a free body trajectory at constant gravity, see Projectile Motion.
The green path in this image is an example of a parabolic trajectory.
A parabolic trajectory is depicted in the bottom-left quadrant of this diagram, where the gravitational potential well of the central mass shows potential energy, and the kinetic energy of the parabolic trajectory is shown in red. The height of the kinetic energy decreases asymptotically toward zero as the speed decreases and distance increases according to Kepler's laws.
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In astrodynamics or celestial mechanics a parabolic trajectory is a Kepler orbit with the eccentricity equal to 1 and is an unbound orbit that is exactly on the border between elliptical and hyperbolic. When moving away from the source it is called an escape orbit, otherwise a capture orbit. It is also sometimes referred to as a C3 = 0 orbit (see Characteristic energy).

Under standard assumptions a body traveling along an escape orbit will coast along a parabolic trajectory to infinity, with velocity relative to the central body tending to zero, and therefore will never return. Parabolic trajectories are minimum-energy escape trajectories, separating positive-energy hyperbolic trajectories from negative-energy elliptic orbits.

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