Word.ws English Dictionary

yo-yo despin

yo-yo despin noun: a method of reducing the rotation rate of a rapidly-spinning spacecraft by unreeling a pair of weights from the spinning spacecraft, greatly increasing the spacecraft's moment of inertia and transferring most of the spacecraft's angular momentum to the weights.

Noun

yo-yo despin (uncountable)

  1. A method of reducing the rotation rate of a rapidly-spinning spacecraft by unreeling a pair of weights from the spinning spacecraft, greatly increasing the spacecraft's moment of inertia and transferring most of the spacecraft's angular momentum to the weights.

Forms of yo-yo despin

alternative formyo-yo de-spin

Origin of yo-yo despin

From the cables being wrapped around the spacecraft and unreeling in the manner of a double yo-yo.

Questions about yo-yo despin

What does yo-yo despin mean?
Yo-yo despin means a method of reducing the rotation rate of a rapidly-spinning spacecraft by unreeling a pair of weights from the spinning spacecraft, greatly increasing the spacecraft's moment of inertia and transferring most of the spacecraft's angular momentum to the weights.
What part of speech is yo-yo despin?
Yo-yo despin is a noun.

Words near yo-yo despin in the dictionary

  1. yo-weights
  2. yo-yo
  3. yo-yo club
  4. yo-yo clubs
  5. yo-yo de-spin
  6. yo-yo despin
  7. yo-yo dieting
  8. yo-yo mode
  9. yo-yo reflux
  10. yo-yo weight
  11. yo-yo weights

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yo-yo despin (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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