Facts about Orbit
Satellites in highly elliptical orbits must be tracked by steerable ground stations.
Artificial satellites are too small to have an appreciable tidal effect on the planets they orbit, but several moons in the solar system are undergoing orbital decay by this mechanism.
A satellite in an elliptical geosynchronous orbit will appear to oscillate in the sky from the viewpoint of a ground station, tracing an analemma in the sky.
When the orbit has a non-zero inclination or eccentricity, the ground track of a satellite in that orbit is a more or less distorted figure-eight, returning to the same places once per sidereal day.
The combination of these two motions produces a figure-eight pattern as seen from the orbited body, and it is called an "analemma."
Merging banking, investment, and insurance functions allows traditional banks to respond to increasing consumer demands for "one-stop shopping" by enabling cross-selling of products (which, the banks hope, will also increase profitability).
Every geosynchronous orbit has a semi-major axis of 42,164 km (26,200 miles).
Owing to mutual gravitational perturbations, the eccentricities of the orbits of the planets in our solar system vary over time.
Most commercial communications satellites and television satellites operate in geostationary orbits.
Bodies which are gravitationally bound to one of the planets in a planetary system, either natural or artificial satellites, follow orbits about that planet.
Second, he found that the orbital speed of each planet is not constant, as had previously been thought, but rather that the speed of the planet depends on the planet's distance from the sun.
Such a statite can be geosynchronous in an orbit different (higher, lower, more or less elliptical, or some other path) from the conic section orbit formed by a gravitational body.
The corresponding terms for synchronous orbits around the planet Mars are areostationary and areosynchronous orbits.
The near ubiquity of these reactions suggests harmony and connectivity among organisms and great antiquity; glycolysis may have originated with the first prokaryotes (organisms without a cell nucleus) at least 3.5 billion years ago.
A comet in a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit about a central star is not gravitationally bound to the star and therefore is not considered part of the star's planetary system.
A geostationary orbit (GEO) is a circular geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator—that is, at 0° inclination and zero orbital eccentricity.
Newton showed that a pair of bodies follow orbits of dimensions that are in inverse proportion to their masses about their common center of mass.
Jupiter, for example, is approximately 5.2 AU from the sun and its orbital period is 11.86 Earth years.
When more than one body is orbiting a central body, interaction among the orbiting bodies also exists, which may cause changes of their orbits.
A satellite in a synchronous orbit that is both equatorial and circular will appear to be suspended motionless above a point on the orbited planet's equator.
The orbital period is the time it takes a planet (or another object) to make one full orbit.
minor planets), comets, interplanetary dusts, and space debris orbit the central star in elliptical orbits.
Most common use of orbit indicates that of a celestial body revolving around a star or planet under the influence of gravity.
Orbits in celestial bodies inspired scientists to derive electron orbitals bound to an atom, and others to believe it as a manifestation of God's eternal principles of creation.
Orbits can be artificially influenced through the use of rocket motors which change the kinetic energy of the body at some point in its path.
Geosynchronous orbits have been in common use ever since, including satellite television.
The first satellite placed into a geostationary orbit was Syncom-3, launched by a Delta-D rocket in 1964.
To date, no comet has been observed in our solar system with a distinctly hyperbolic orbit.
Isaac Newton demonstrated that Kepler's laws were derivable from his theory of gravitation and that, in general, the orbits of bodies responding to the force of gravity were conic sections.
All these motions are actually "orbits" in a technical sense—they are describing a portion of an elliptical path around the center of gravity—but the orbits are of course interrupted by striking the earth.
A satellite in this orbit appears stationary with respect to a fixed point on the rotating Earth.
The first comprehensive book on the history of Puerto Rico was written by Fray Iсigo Abbad y Lasierra in 1786, 293 years after the first Spaniards arrived on the island.
Geostationary orbits can only be achieved very close to the ring 35,786 kilometers (km) (22,240 statute miles) above mean sea level.
At the end of this period, Amish young adults are expected to find a spouse and be baptized.
Orbital decay can also occur due to tidal forces for objects below the synchronous orbit for the body they are orbiting.
An open orbit has the shape of a hyperbola (when the velocity is greater than the escape velocity), or a parabola (when the velocity is exactly the escape velocity).
The geostationary orbit was first popularized by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in 1945 as a useful orbit for communications satellites.
A perfect stable geostationary orbit is an ideal that can only be approximated.
A geosynchronous orbit is an orbit around the Earth with an orbital period matching the Earth's sidereal rotation period.
Synchronous orbits exist around all moons, planets, stars and black holes — unless they rotate so slowly that the orbit would be outside their Hill sphere.
At the present epoch, Mars has the next largest eccentricity while the smallest eccentricities are those of the orbits of Venus and Neptune.
A synchronous orbit about the Earth that is circular and lies in the equatorial plane is called a geostationary orbit.
Synchronous orbits are commonly employed by artificial satellites used for communication.
Similarly, the Clarke Belt is the part of space approximately 35,786 km above mean sea level in the plane of the equator where near-geostationary orbits may be achieved.
Another method of artificially influencing an orbit is through the use of solar sails or magnetic sails.
Orbiting bodies in closed orbits repeat their path after a constant period of time.
Most inner moons of planets have synchronous rotation, so their synchronous orbits are, in practice, limited to their leading and trailing Lagrange points.
The special case of a geosynchronous orbit that is circular and directly above the equator is called a geostationary orbit.
The orbit can be open (so the object never returns) or closed (returning), depending on the total kinetic + potential energy of the system.
Orbits were first analyzed mathematically by Johannes Kepler who formulated his results in his three laws of planetary motion based on Tycho Brahe's observational data.
Each time, the orbit grows less eccentric (more circular) because the object loses kinetic energy precisely when that energy is at its maximum.