Re: Launch inclinations - wa

Bill Bard (wtba@eci-esyst.com)
9 Apr 1996 08:18:07 -0400

Philip Chien said:

>The only Titan dog-leg I know of from the Cape was the NOSS cluster 
>launched on June 8, 1990.  From the launch time and the resulting
>inclination it was clear that a dog-leg was performed at some point in 
>the trajectory.  What's interesting is the initial in-orbit inclination 
>was about 50 degrees, a fairly easy inclination to reach from the Cape 
>without any dogleg maneuver, simply by launching at the appropriate 
>time.  The satellites were eventually spotted in 63 degree orbits, the 
>nominal inclination for NOSS.

I'm not sure I would call that a dog-leg. My definition of a dog-leg is a
major plane change (> 0.5 deg?) occuring during initial powered flight.
It sounds like it could have occurred after initial orbit was obtained 
and perhaps accomplished by the payload. If that is a dog-leg, then all 
geosats do dog-legs.

As for going to an initial 50 deg inc and then 63 deg, a reason that 
comes to mind is to release some other payload at 50 deg inc (or lower) 
on the same flight.

Bill