aerocapture
aerocapture noun: 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.
Noun
aerocapture (countable and uncountable, plural aerocaptures)
- 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.
Verb
aerocapture (third-person singular simple present aerocaptures, present participle aerocapturing, simple past and past participle aerocaptured)
- To perform (an) aerocapture.
Forms of aerocapture
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | aerocaptures |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | aerocaptures |
| present participle | aerocapturing |
| past participle | aerocaptured |
| past | aerocaptured |
Origin of aerocapture
From aero- + capture.
Questions about aerocapture
- What does aerocapture mean?
- Aerocapture means 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.
- What part of speech is aerocapture?
- Aerocapture can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of aerocapture?
- The plural of aerocapture is aerocaptures.
Words near aerocapture in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: aerocapture (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “aerocapture.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aerocapture. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.