Trojan Point

The Trojan Points of a system are the stable points lying in the small body’s orbit 60 degrees ahead and behind it, and thus equidistant from the small and large bodies.

The physical properties of this deep space real estate make it valuable to world-states, or other interests, willing to exploit them.

Description (Specifications)

In a gravitational system composed of a small body orbiting a much larger one (such as a planet and star or a moon and planet), there are two stable points lying in the small body’s orbit 60 degrees ahead and behind it, and thus equidistant from the small and large bodies. These are called Trojan points (also LaGrangian points, which are abbreviated as L4 and L5)

History & Background (Dossier)

The Trojan points of a gas giant near an asteroid belt commonly collect a cluster of asteroids. The name comes from the first such cluster discovered by Terrans at Jupiter in the Sol system: the asteroids were named after mythical heroes of the Trojan War.

References

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• J. Andrew Keith. Beltstrike (Game Designers Workshop, 1984), 10.
• Marc Miller. Imperial Encyclopedia (Game Designers Workshop, 1987), .
• Martin Dougherty. Among the Trojans (Mongoose Publishing, 2015), .