aerocapture

/EH1 R OW0 K AE1 P CH ER0/
noun
  1. 1

    (astronautics) A form of aerobraking in which a spacecraft uses atmospheric drag to decelerate from a hyperbolic trajectory into a closed orbit, eliminating the need for a large orbital-insertion burn and requiring only small correction burns to raise the spacecraft's periapsis out of the atmosphere.

verb
  1. 1

    (intransitive) To perform (an) aerocapture.

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