Pi Day: How many decimal places in Pi do you need for spatial calculations? NASA responds

Mathematical constant pi (π) This is important in the field of mathematics and helps to solve various scientific problems. However, despite the large number of decimal places, Not all of them are necessary to resolve settlements in POT.

space agency, especially Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Caltech, years ago, resolved a follower’s doubt in which he wondered how many decimal places Pi needed for his calculations.

Does JPL only use 3.14 for their calculations? Pi? ¿O se utiliza más decimales, como, por ejemplo: 3,141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360

This issue was resolved by the Mission Director and Chief Engineer YesWow (probe exploring the dwarf planet Ceres), Mark Rayman.

“For JPL’s high-precision interplanetary navigation calculations, we use 3.141592653589793. I think we can even see that there are no physically realistic calculations that scientists make that should include almost as many decimal places as presented. he claimed.

And for this he gave an example as shown in contraption:

The spacecraft that is furthest from Earth is Voyager 1, which is currently at a distance of 22.607 million kilometers. If we were to draw a circle with this radius and wanted to calculate the circumference (2πR), the result would be approximately 142,000 million kilometers. It is not necessary to know the exact value, but what is the error if you do not use more decimal places than Pi. If, for example, many more decimal places were used, the error would be ridiculous, and the calculated circumference would hardly be 3 or 4 centimeters longer, which, in relation to these 142,000 million kilometers, is a fraction of no significance.

Pi is present in all space

Of course the number Pi it is used for many of the more realistic calculations in probe and astronaut missions. In particular, spacecraft tanks use a constant determined by volume. Pi it is also present in orbit around the Cassini spacecraft observing Saturn. On the other hand, it determines the circumference of craters found on different planets such as Mars.

He TIN, represented by the Greek letter “π”, is one of the most exciting numbers in mathematics; For this reason, in 2009, the US Congress chose March 14 (3.14 leading digits Pi) as a day to honor this irrational number.

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