Space flight is an exciting topic that has captivated the imaginations of many for millennia! Countless astronomers in ancient civilizations have cataloged stars and planets, but it was only up till the very accurate observations by Tycho Brahe (1600) that led to Kepler modeling their kinematics after those observations (1610) as his Laws of Planetary Motion. Eventually, Newton demystified the dynamics of planetary motion too, and published his Laws of Gravitation (1687), which is still prevalent in modern astrodynamics today (2023).

SARC is excited to host an introductory space flight workshop! We will learn about basic orbital mechanics, how to describe orbital shapes, how to describe orbital motion in different coordinate frames, and how spacecrafts maneuver themselves with thrusters in-flight. This workshop runs for 90 minutes, with small exercises for us to try coding out using Python on Jupyter Lite. No further software installations are necessary.

Prerequisite Knowledge: Basic Python, a bit of algebra and calculus, plus some appreciation of high school physics.

Please note that capacity is limited.

If you need a disability-related accommodation or wheelchair access information, please contact the Diversity & Access Office at disability.access@stanford.edu. Requests should be made one week in advance of the event.