I think I've worked out what the drag profile for Phobos Grunt means. http://twitpic.com/7vut8o/full The ballistic drag curve correlates with a spacecraft moving through 90 degrees (see image). The clipping of the peak drag (when aligned with the trajectory) is where the solar panels eclipse the base and therefore reduce drag). Absolute maximum is slightly side on with maximum solar panel, but all the base incident to the atmosphere. Minimum is edge on when the solar panels present only the edge, and the spacecraft sides (including hollow parts) is presented to the atmosphere. If this is correct, and nothing else changes to alter the spacecraft orientation, it should return to the first "maximum" around 26 December. Thoughts? Paul Salanitri -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20111221/de292da4/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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