I know it is a relative measure. It can’t be anything other than a relative measure.
Because it is a relative measure, it has degrees of freedom independent from the object’s kinetic energy. Those second moments can play a part in slowing the object’s relative velocity. That’s what I would grill them on.
You are focused on the first moment only and ignoring the second moments. Often in modeling, the second moments affect the first coefficients greatly. It is not a static thing.
I’m leaving for Thanksgiving dinner, but here’s what’s missing:
The Coefficient Matrix A is time-varying, A=A(t). Each parameter estimate a_xy = a_xy(t).
Data acquisition over time usually reveals a limiting value, a value that remains stable but we don’t know what their computers are churning out.
The astronomists may be right, nevertheless, they need to be grilled as a matter of training.
NASA employees are usually not the first string. Relentless budget cuts leave a gap in the middle management age demographic, lots of young people with a few grandfather/grandmother adult handlers. The young get briefed/schooled by the heavyweights who work for outside contractors where the pay is multiples of a government salary. The heavyweights come in to give briefings/seminars. The young act as sponges. The talented young are scouted by the corporate scientist assets.
There are some very good NASA scientists though. Usually, they have a separate gig with a university like Caltech or a national lab like JPL.
The only reason I am commenting on this is that during the Obama years a lot of government young learned to lie, cheat, ad steal as a normal course of government business. NASA became focused on ‘Muslim Outreach’. To build back the prestige requires coming down hard on the current stable, challenging them and rewarding them for rigor.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
When I was earning my B.S. in Physics (admittedly, a long time ago), I used to love "playing" with celestial mechanics.
This object had, at a certain position in space, a velocity greater than the Sun's escape velocity at that position. Apart from some unimaginable concatenation of events prior to that point in time (i.e., a series of extremely close swing-bys near the Gas / Ice Giants), that can only mean that the object was/is not in orbit around the Sun, but was/is rather on a hyperbolic trajectory.
It's really very simple reasoning.
Regards,