At 04:14 6-4-01 , you wrote:
>The Delta rocket will fly
>up the east coast of North America, then over Europe, and
>spacecraft separation from the rocket will occur over the Middle East.
I was quite astonished to see that the spacecraft is flying over Europe while
being launched from Florida. I always had the impression to launch due East
to exploit the extra assist from the Earth's rotation. And since this
spacecraft
has extra non-scientific payload in the form of a booster to get it to Mars
I found
it strange to see it getting launched into a ~50° inclination orbit.
The only reason I can think of not to launch it due east are restrictions
for the
transfer orbit to Mars, since this planet moves in the ecliptic while the
Earth is tilted
23° to it. But if this is the case, why couldn't an extra boost during the
transfer orbit
change the orbit to the right inclination? This, to me, seems like much
more economic.
Can someone answer this question?
Regards,
Cees Bassa
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 06 2001 - 14:34:12 PDT