🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2100@ge-dab.GE.COM>, harrison@sunny.DAB.GE.COM (Gregory Harrison) wrote:
}The 2/3 stable points are useful despite the instability in the 3rd
}dimension.  There was, and may still be, a satellite placed at the libration
point between
} the Earth and the Sun, and set into an orbit about the line between the
Earth and
} the Sun such that when viewed from the Earth (with appropriate equipment,
}not eyes, of course) the satellite would circumscribe the borders of the Sun.
NASA
} had redirected this satellite into that orbit after it had completed some
} other mission.  Perhaps it was called
}Solar Max, I can't recall.  Perhaps someone else out there would know.  Maybe
}the L5er ==> NSS member who originally passed the news to me may be on the net
}and would know.

The one satellite I can recall in such an orbit was reused as the
International Comet Explorer or some such name--NASA spent 18 months
maneuvering it through a complex trajectory around the earth-moon system using
multiple gravity boosts to get it into solar orbit and fly by a comet, all on
station-keeping fuel!  It even managed to beat out all the Halley fly-bys by a
few months, going to a different comet.  Too bad the original mission didn't
require cameras....

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