Each orbital plane (ideally) has eleven Iridiums evenly spaced, making 14.34216 orbits/day, and two spares at 14.54 orbits (missing in some planes - failures in higher/lower orbits) Thus in one day each of the latter make 0.20 additional orbits, (more than) catching up with two of the operational ones spaced 0.09 orbits > What a site! Both Iridium 51 and 37 were right on time early this am, less than > a minute apart. Didn't see flares but was observing thru tall trees and can't > be certain. A thrilling experience. > Anyone...how did this happen to occur and is this a common placement? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 26 2000 - 22:28:23 PST