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The first satellite placed in a geostationary orbit was Syncom 3, which was launched by a Delta D rocket in 1964. [14] With its increased bandwidth, this satellite was able to transmit live coverage of the Summer Olympics from Japan to America. Geostationary orbits have been in common use ever since, in particular for satellite television. [10]
For Earth this means a period of just under 12 hours at an altitude of approximately 20,200 km (12,544.2 miles) if the orbit is circular. [16] Molniya orbit: A semi-synchronous variation of a Tundra orbit. For Earth this means an orbital period of just under 12 hours. Such a satellite spends most of its time over two designated areas of the ...
Animation (not to scale) showing geosynchronous satellite orbiting the Earth. A geosynchronous orbit (sometimes abbreviated GSO) is an Earth-centered orbit with an orbital period that matches Earth's rotation on its axis, 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds (one sidereal day). The synchronization of rotation and orbital period means that, for ...
For this diagram, the 3-dimensional aspect of orbits have been flattened. For instance, the view of the Earth depicted is looking down to the North Pole which makes the orbit representations appear to be equatorial. While this is accurate for geostationary orbits, other orbits listed are actually at significant inclinations.
The specific example discussed is of a satellite orbiting a planet, but the rules of thumb could also apply to other situations, such as orbits of small bodies around a star such as the Sun. Kepler's laws of planetary motion: Orbits are elliptical, with the heavier body at one focus of the ellipse. A special case of this is a circular orbit (a ...
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also called Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth–Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).
An animation showing a low eccentricity orbit (near-circle, in red), and a high eccentricity orbit (ellipse, in purple). In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object [1] such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such ...
A highly elliptical orbit (HEO) is an elliptic orbit with high eccentricity, usually referring to one around Earth.Examples of inclined HEO orbits include Molniya orbits, named after the Molniya Soviet communication satellites which used them, and Tundra orbits.