Reasonable way to determine orbital parameters in an unknows stellar system
After traveling a long long time, your spaceship is finally entering into the gravitational sphere of influence of a Sun-like star. Your captain would now like to move from the Oort-like cloud distance where the ship is moving after entering the system to the inner depths of the system itself, possibly avoid slamming onto an un-spotted Jovian gas giant or a an asteroid belt (not even mentioning the main star) because of some unexpected Gravitational pull along the trip. Your ship's insurance provider, despite appreciating scientific effort, does not approve using the ship itself as a probe.
Now you, as navigation engineer, want to determine the best set of orbital parameters to explore the system without using too much fuel, but still you don't know:
- how many planets there are
- how massive they are
- which orbits they follow
Is there any way to find these info from your standpoint and possibly quicker than spending few hundreds years observing the sky, like your ancestors did on planet Earth?
You have no magic. Only nowadays technology (except the part allowing you to do interstellar cruise...)
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/63414. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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