Who Uses This Graph?
One graph of planet distance and orbital period, four very different space jobs. Match each career to the way that person actually puts this data to work.
Each dot is a planet, in order from the Sun
Match the career to the description
Drag each career onto the description that fits. You can also tap a career, then tap a description, or use Tab and Enter on a keyboard.
Careers
How they use the graph
All four matched
You just saw how one graph of distance and orbital period does four different jobs. The telescope operator gathers the measurements it is built from, the aerospace engineer uses it to plan how long a mission will take, the navigator uses it to aim at where a moving planet will be, and the planetary scientist uses it to predict the year of a newly found object and tell whether it orbits like a planet.