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Article #4096Re: Moon or Mars? Editorial in _Air & Space Smithsonian_
From: Phil R. Karn
Date: Thu, 07 Apr 1988 07:56
Date: Thu, 07 Apr 1988 07:56
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> If you would think about it, a satellite could be in sunlight > almost all the time(e.g.) a polar orbit. Not really. To do what you want for an appreciable length of time, you want a "sun synchronous" orbit phased over the terminator. This is actually pretty easy to do with the earth (almost every launch from Vandenburg goes into sun-synchronous orbit, though usually not over the terminator). But a sun-synchronous lunar orbit is much more difficult because of the moon's far more irregular gravity field, and because of the earth's proportionately larger perturbations. I was thinking of a lunar equatorial orbit mainly because it's much cheaper to get there. Phil
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!umix!umich!mibte!gamma!ulysses!thumper!karn From: karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space Subject: Re: Moon or Mars? Editorial in _Air & Space Smithsonian_ Message-ID: <1033@thumper.bellcore.com> Date: 7 Apr 88 07:56:58 GMT References: <47032@sun.uucp> <1290@hubcap.UUCP> <4076@whuts.UUCP> <1384@silver.bacs.indiana.edu> Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc Lines: 14 Summary: sunlight percentages in orbit