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Awesome! I noticed that there is another much-used orbit apart from the round, earth-centered Geostationary Orbit, which is smaller, more elliptical, off-axis
by qwertox 2y ago
Awesome!
I noticed that there is another much-used orbit apart from the round, earth-centered Geostationary Orbit, which is smaller, more elliptical, off-axis and tilted.
It may be the Molniya Orbit [0] which is "is a type of satellite orbit designed to provide communications and remote sensing coverage over high latitudes [...] The name comes from the Molniya satellites, a series of Soviet/Russian civilian and military communications satellites which have used this type of orbit since the mid-1960s."
Can anyone confirm this?
It appears to be full of JSC Vimpel satellites, which is "a Russian defense industry leader" [1], but from randomly clicking on the objects many are just debris.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
[1] https://macvympel.ru/en/about/ https://macvympel.ru/en/about/
- dr_orpheus 2y agoI believe what you are probably looking at (I'm having trouble loading it) is probably debris in the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit Edit: I believe that you are looking at a group of debris that is in an orbit close to GTO. This response [1] has a more detailed answer. [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/48911/what-events-caused-this-debris-in-highly-elliptical-orbits/48916#48916 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/48911/what-events-...