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How much stationkeeping does a geostationary satellite have to do to remain in orbit over a long time scale? I would think not much?
by eunoia 7y ago
How much stationkeeping does a geostationary satellite have to do to remain in orbit over a long time scale?
I would think not much?
- ianai 7y agoI think none if positioned well enough.
- gpm 7y agoThings like the moon will perturb it - orbits assume a 2-body system when we are strictly speaking in a (chaotic) n-body system. Over millions of years that will add up, honestly I'm hoping someone else will do the math/research and figure out if they add up to enough that they wouldn't still be orbiting earth.
- ianai 7y agoThat’s my point though. The moon hasn’t degraded and crashed into the earth so it’s clearly possible for a satellite to orbit the earth indefinitely - for some suitable definition of indefinite.
- gpm 7y agoThe moon's stability is a good point, but not conclusive. The moon's orbit isn't perturbed by it's own gravity. It's also much larger, so much more mass (radius cubed)/surface area (radius squared), so less affected by solar wind, micro meteor impacts, and the like.
- pxi 7y agoBut still, it's more likely we'd find evidence of a distant past civilisation on the moon than on earth right?
- scottie_m 7y agoThe moon’s orbit is taking it further from Earth over time, it it’s very far away and very massive, as well as being influenced by the Sun. A satellite’s mass is almost negligible, and compared to the Earth-Moon distance it’s distance from Earth is too. A pebble hitting the moon also isn’t going to do much to change its course, while the same pebble will do a lot more to a satellite. The same is true of dust.
- stouset 7y agoThe moon has a ton of mass and—therefore—inertia. The chaotic effects of the system are still present, but require dramatically larger timescales to notice any kind of effect.