Talk:Near-rectilinear halo orbit

okay but what is it?

It would help to say what "near-rectilinear" means. —Tamfang (talk) 19:26, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Agree completely, Tamfang. There was a tag in the article from June 2020 asking that "near-rectilinear" be explained, but User:Soumya-8974 removed the tag in October 2020, without the answer to the question ever being provided.

I will re-add the tag asking that this be clarified. N2e (talk) 17:57, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why Halo?

'Near rectilinear' seems clear enough. However, I thought Halo orbits were around Lagrange points. The orbit depicted seems to be a polar orbit around the moon. The Lagrange points are all in the plane of the moon's orbit so I don't see how it is an orbit around a Lagrange point but maybe it is related in some way? crandles (talk) 23:24, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Moon's Hill sphere extends out to about 60,000 km - the planned orbit for Lunar Gateway meanwhile goes out to distance of 70,000 km and thus reaches well outside of where the Moon's gravitational potential dominates over the Earth's. According to this source there's four such stable orbits, two for each pole, and two extending inwards or outwards, and I understand they can be described as a special case halo orbit in a wide trajectory around L1 or L2 with a very close approach to the Moon once per cycle. 93.103.223.236 (talk) 09:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]