blog:articles:general:orbital_shenanigans
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blog:articles:orbital_shenanigans [2019/02/16 01:07] – Phil Ide | blog:articles:general:orbital_shenanigans [2019/03/06 10:37] – Phil Ide | ||
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====== Orbital Shenanigans ====== | ====== Orbital Shenanigans ====== | ||
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Sometimes when you do some research – actually, quite often – you find out some really interesting stuff and end up changing your mind. In my story, I had some people on the ground on Mars, and wanted a spacecraft in a geostationary orbit above them to give them communications between them at all times. Just for info, when talking about geostationary orbits, the accepted term for Mars is aerostationary. I’ll use geostationary and geosynchronous because it’s my blog and although the aero prefix is accepted, it isn’t mandatory. | Sometimes when you do some research – actually, quite often – you find out some really interesting stuff and end up changing your mind. In my story, I had some people on the ground on Mars, and wanted a spacecraft in a geostationary orbit above them to give them communications between them at all times. Just for info, when talking about geostationary orbits, the accepted term for Mars is aerostationary. I’ll use geostationary and geosynchronous because it’s my blog and although the aero prefix is accepted, it isn’t mandatory. | ||
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Unfortunately, | Unfortunately, | ||
- | So, back to the drawing board. Let’s tackle this another way. Another orbit, what you might call a ‘regular’ orbit, doesn’t have this problem. At least, not so much. One suggestion was to use a lower orbit at an elevation of 5,000km. Consider that at the geostationary orbit (13,634km), the satellite can see 30 degrees of the planet either side of the point it is above. That’s a 60 degree spread. At 5,000km, this reduces, but not by too much. This is important, so hang on to that information. | + | So, back to the drawing board. Let’s tackle this another way. Another orbit, what you might call a ‘regular’ orbit, doesn’t have this problem. At least, not so much. One suggestion was to use a lower orbit at an elevation of 5,000km. Consider that at the geostationary orbit (17,215km), the satellite can see 30 degrees of the planet either side of the point it is above. That’s a 60 degree spread. At 5,000km, this reduces, but not by too much. This is important, so hang on to that information. |
A 5,000km orbit has a period of approx 0.26 days (that’s Earth days, not Martian ones, which are about half an hour longer). Using my orbital calculator, I finessed the orbit down to 4, | A 5,000km orbit has a period of approx 0.26 days (that’s Earth days, not Martian ones, which are about half an hour longer). Using my orbital calculator, I finessed the orbit down to 4, | ||
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So, yeah. I went with it. | So, yeah. I went with it. | ||
+ | ~~socialite~~ | ||
+ | ~~DISCUSSION~~ | ||
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blog/articles/general/orbital_shenanigans.txt · Last modified: 2019/08/03 11:25 by Phil Ide