3 ms·
They're really moving. I watched one go from Cape York to a similar latitude as Tasmania - about 4000km - in around 23 seconds. So about 600,000km/hr; around 20
by nomilk 3y ago
They're really moving. I watched one go from Cape York to a similar latitude as Tasmania - about 4000km - in around 23 seconds. So about 600,000km/hr; around 20x faster than ISS (28,000km/hr). I have no idea why that speed was chosen, or if other speeds would work, just found it interesting.
- modeless 3y agoThe default visualization speed is 16x real time.
- nomilk 3y agoOh, so it is, (I see now 'live' is available by clicking on that option (top right). Thanks for the correction.
- mkl 3y agoFor near-circular orbits like this, speed controls altitude [0] [1]. 600,000km/hr is way faster than Earth escape velocity, so anything that fast won't be orbiting Earth. [0] https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Tangential_velocities_at_altitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Tangential_veloc...