In reply to Colin Knight, Ed Light wrote: "At any location (within about 51.6 degrees of the equator), the ISS orbital plane passes by twice each day (strictly, twice every 23 hours 36.4 minutes because of the orbital plane's precession) - once heading northward, once heading southward. For various logistic/political/safety reasons, the shuttle launches along the northward part of the orbit plane. The fact that the ISS may be seen six times per day from the launch site is not really relevent; the important thing is for the shuttle to be in the target satellite's orbital plane." Interestingly, there are a number of other details to this plane-matching business. For those of you with AOL accounts, former NASA Flight Dynamics Officer, Roger Balettie, went over some of the details recently on the space flight message boards (Keyword SEO). Frank Reed Chicago, IL www.clockwk.com/fer ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 29 2002 - 04:21:48 EST