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Basics of Space Flight
Basics GUIDE INDEX GLOSSARY UNITS OF MEASURE LINKS
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Participant's Guide

Welcome to Basics of Space Flight. The authors hope you'll enjoy and benefit from using this document. At the end, you'll be offered a certificate of completion that you can fill out and give your supervisor for inclusion in your training record.

Quizzes

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The Table of Contents appears on each page so you may select any chapter. To see all the topics in all the chapters, select "INDEX" from the menu bar.

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Introducing Abbreviations

Except units of measure, abbreviated terms are spelled out the first time they are used. Thereafter, the abbreviations are generally used alone. They can all be found in the Glossary.

Units of Measure

Throughout this website, measurements are expressed in SI, the International System of Units (the modern metric system of measurement). You will find them all explained, along with a table of metric to English conversions, on the Units of Measure page, linked from the Menu Bar at the bottom section of each page.

Glossary

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Throughout the text, important new words and phrases are underlined as they are introduced. Most of these are also listed in the glossary.

Editorial Page

Editorial notes on the original document, the updates, the authors, acknowledgements, image credits, honors received, etc. appear on the EDITORIAL PAGE linked only from the front page. There, you'll also find information on how to contact the author and the webmaster. Feedback to the author from readers is especially welcome. Be sure to let us know if you encounter any errors or broken links. Note: the "FEEDBACK" link at the bottom of the front page goes to the general JPL web administration, rather than directly to the Basics of Space Flight author.




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HOME   |   GUIDE   |   INDEX   |   GLOSSARY   |   UNITS OF MEASURE   |   LINKS

SECTION I  
ENVIRONMENT
1 The Solar System
2 Reference Systems
3 Gravity & Mechanics
4 Trajectories
5 Planetary Orbits
6 Electromagnetics

SECTION II
FLIGHT PROJECTS
7 Mission Inception
8 Experiments
9 S/C Classification
10 Telecommunications
11 Onboard Systems
12 Science Instruments
13 Navigation

SECTION III
FLIGHT OPERATIONS
14 Launch
15 Cruise
16 Encounter
17 Extended Operations
18 Deep Space Network

 
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