aerocapture

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English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Etymology

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From aero- +‎ capture.

Noun

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aerocapture (countable and uncountable, plural aerocaptures)

  1. (astronautics) A form of aerobraking in which a spacecraft uses atmospheric drag to decelerate from a hyperbolic trajectory into a closed orbit, eliminating the need for a large orbital-insertion burn and requiring only small correction burns to raise the spacecraft's periapsis out of the atmosphere.
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Verb

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aerocapture (third-person singular simple present aerocaptures, present participle aerocapturing, simple past and past participle aerocaptured)

  1. (intransitive) To perform (an) aerocapture.