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24/7 availability was mentioned several times. Does this mean it's possible to have a satellite in geostationary orbit that is never eclipsed by the Earth? Or
by imglorp 7y ago
24/7 availability was mentioned several times.
Does this mean it's possible to have a satellite in geostationary orbit that is never eclipsed by the Earth? Or does it mean you have more than one satellite serving a power receiver?
- DFHippie 7y agoThe latter. This is discussed later in the article.
- m4rtink 7y agoGEO satellites are pretty much always in the sun, minus couple hours per year when they hit the (very snall at this altitude) Earth shadow.
- 4gotunameagain 7y agoGEO orbit is too high for this application, since it would require an insanely collimated microwave beam (or insanely directional). The power loss is proportional to r^2. Google "spherical spreading loss"
- DennisP 7y agoThat actually is doable. GEO is generally considered the best orbit for a solar power sat. The receiver has to be several kilometers across, but that's good because you don't actually want to fry any birds flying through. There have even been proposals to put transmitters on the Moon, but that's stretching things.
- 4gotunameagain 7y agoSure, but I thought the consideration here was about UAVs and the such :)
- iso947 7y agoYou can have orbits that are never eclipsed by the earth, but not GEO. GEO satellites go dark for about an hour a night for about 6 weeks a year. https://www.stephenmack.space/blog/geostationary-satellite-eclipse https://www.stephenmack.space/blog/geostationary-satellite-e... Contains a video of them