{"id":214587,"date":"2025-05-23T13:11:24","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/spacecraft-can-brake-in-space-using-drag-%e2%88%92-advancing-craft-agility-space-safety-and-planetary-missions"},"modified":"2025-05-23T13:11:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:11:24","slug":"spacecraft-can-brake-in-space-using-drag-%e2%88%92-advancing-craft-agility-space-safety-and-planetary-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/spacecraft-can-brake-in-space-using-drag-%e2%88%92-advancing-craft-agility-space-safety-and-planetary-missions","title":{"rendered":"Spacecraft can \u2018brake\u2019 in space using drag \u2212 advancing craft agility, space safety and planetary missions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/spacecraft-can-brake-in-space-using-drag-e28892-advancing-craft-agility-space-safety-and-planetary-missions.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When you put your hand out the window of a moving car, you feel a force pushing against you called drag. This force opposes a moving vehicle, and it\u2019s part of the reason why your car naturally slows to a stop if you take your foot off the gas pedal. But drag doesn\u2019t just slow down cars.<\/p>\n<p>Aerospace engineers are working on using the drag force in space to develop more fuel-efficient spacecraft and missions, deorbit spacecraft without creating as much space junk, and even place probes in orbit around other planets.<\/p>\n<p>Space is not a complete vacuum \u2212 at least not all of it. Earth\u2019s atmosphere gets thinner with altitude, but it has enough air to impart a force of drag on orbiting spacecraft, even up to about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you put your hand out the window of a moving car, you feel a force pushing against you called drag. This force opposes a moving vehicle, and it\u2019s part of the reason why your car naturally slows to a stop if you take your foot off the gas pedal. But drag doesn\u2019t just slow [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}