Navigating the Cosmos: Vestry's Unique Orbital Challenges

This week on Roid Rage, we dive into the brutal, thankless math of orbital mechanics with James, one of AstroForge’s Flight Dynamics Engineers. James walks us through how we get our spacecraft from a rideshare drop-off orbit to a fast-moving metal rock millions of kilometers away— without crashing into the moon or missing the asteroid entirely.

We talk low-thrust trajectory planning, why everything’s harder without a propulsion team, how to optimize when you can barely steer, and why half the job is just educated guessing and praying your simulations are right.