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But is this true? Sure if you want coverage of Siberia you may need your own, but doesn't every orbit cross the equator? I would have thought plenty of satellit
by iguy 7y ago
But is this true? Sure if you want coverage of Siberia you may need your own, but doesn't every orbit cross the equator? I would have thought plenty of satellites cross Ethiopia every hour, although perhaps not bothering to run all their cameras without a customer?
- mdszy 7y agoGeostationary orbits won't necessarily cross the equator.
- yellowapple 7y agoI'm reasonably sure satellite imaging happens pretty far below geostationary, though. It'd be interesting if we could someday park satellites in geostationary and just stare at a given spot continuously, but lens technology just ain't there yet, last I checked.
- mdszy 7y agoNOAA has a network of geostationary weather satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Operational_Environmental_Satellite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Operational_Envi...
- goodcanadian 7y agoYes, they will. The only place you can put a geostationary satellite is on the equator. In theory, they stay in position above the selected point on the equator. In practice, they aren't perfectly stationary, and they will move around the designated point, which will, of necessity, cross the equator.
- elil17 7y agoI’m by no means an expert on satellite orbit selection, but from my experience as a consumer the quality and frequency of imagery for an area has to do with a variety of factors - how often the overhead pass occurs in daytime vs. nighttime, how much data capacity they will devote to downloading the imagery, and what angle they point the sensor at. Here’s a real world coverage map from a European earth observation mission, you can see they were able to select and orbit that gives them daily coverage of Europe but only biweekly coverage of Africa: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Slater12/publication/320444878/figure/fig6/AS:551169598267395@1508420480299/The-revisit-and-coverage-frequency-of-the-Sentinel-1-satellites-Source.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Slater12/publicat...
- iguy 7y agoThanks, nice to see a map. But all those lines which stop at the mediterranean coast... those satellites surely cross north africa at almost the same time of day, it's just not marked because they are turned off? As you say, perhaps limited by daily bandwidth (or perhaps power?)... but that sounds like a commercial consideration.