Celestia Forums

Hi folks...

I'm trying to place a space station at the L-5 point, but I can't find any information on how to define this orbit. Is there such a thing?

...John...

Hi Dollan,

I think we dealt with this (inconclusively) between 24 Mar 2004 and 15 Jun 2004 here: Planets in Trojan points?.

It depended on which body you wanted to set the L5 point for. If it was relative to a body in a simple Keplerian orbit, then you could reuse the same orbit and take off 60?° from the MeanAnomaly. Add 60?° for the L4 point, and 180?° for the L3 point.

But, if you wanted to do it for the Moon, then the modelling of the drifting orbit with vsop87 means the L5 point will not seem to follow the Moon after a while...

Spiff.