The Oberth effect is the principle, named for the rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, that a rocket engine burn produces a greater change in a spacecraft's final kinetic energy when performed at high speed, typically near the closest point of an orbit around a massive body, than the identical burn performed at low speed farther away. Mission planners exploit it by timing major engine burns to occur at periapsis, extracting more usable velocity change from the same amount of propellant. The effect follows directly from the fact that kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity, so added speed contributes more energy at higher starting speeds.
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