What name is given to the point of a planet’s orbit furthest from the sun?
Orbit of Mars Orbit of Mars Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million kilometers), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, making the average orbital speed 24 km/s. The eccentricity is greater than that of every other planet except Mercury, and this causes a large difference between the aphelion and perihelion distances—they are 1.6660 and 1.3814 AU. Mars is in the midst of a long-term increase in eccentricity. It reached a minimum of 0.079 about 19 millennia ago, and will peak at about
Sun-synchronous orbit Sun-synchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO, also called a heliosynchronous orbit) is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is an orbit arranged so that it precesses through one complete revolution each year, so it always maintains the same relationship with the Sun. A Sun-synchronous orbit can place a satellite in constant sunlight, which allows the solar panels to work continually. This orbit is also useful for imaging, spy, and weather satellites, because every time that the