Center of mass separate bodies, such as the planets of the Solar System, the center of mass may not correspond to the position of any individual member of the system. The center of mass is a useful reference point for calculations in mechanics that involve masses distributed in space, such as the linear and angular momentum of planetary bodies and rigid body dynamics. In orbital mechanics, the equations of motion of planets are formulated as point masses located at the centers of mass. The center of mass frame is an inertial frame in which the center of mass of a system is at
Angular velocity with a linear velocity "V"("t") in each instant. To obtain the equations, it is convenient to imagine a rigid body attached to the frames and consider a coordinate system that is fixed with respect to the rigid body. Then we will study the coordinate transformations between this coordinate and the fixed "laboratory" system. As shown in the figure on the right, the lab system's origin is at point "O", the rigid body system origin is at and the vector from "O" to is R. A particle ("i") in the rigid body is located at point P and the vector position