5 ms·
Whoa, that's awesome! Look at all the stuff high above the north pole. Almost all Russian.
by Gravityloss 11y ago
Whoa, that's awesome!
Look at all the stuff high above the north pole. Almost all Russian.
- jameshart 11y agoThing about orbits - anything that's currently high above the north pole will very soon be less high, and above the south pole...
- chinathrow 11y agoZoom out and you'll see the geostationary stuff too. E.g. eutelsat.
- jameshart 11y agoNot over the north pole you won't :)
- robertfw 11y agoWith a non-circular orbit you can maximize the time spent over your target area by having a high apogee over target, and a lower perigee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
- ovi256 11y agoIt's called a Molnya orbit. The Soviets started using it because it would provide good coverage of their very nordic territory, something geostationary sats would not do. Of course, the sats are not stationary (from the point of view of earth, so that excludes stationary parabolic antennas, as are very common with GEO sats) and you do need at least three for continuous coverage in time.
- 32faction 11y ago> The Soviets started using it because it would provide good coverage of their very nordic territory They also used it to surveil/recon the United States as it can loiter in US airspace for a while.
- Kiro 11y agoI don't see anything above the north pole. It's almost empty.