Bill, I don't know if it's planned in this case, but the spares can be left in an intermediate orbit which regresses in Right Ascension at a different rate to the operational constellation. If an outage occurs, there's a delay until the two planes coincide, but a spare can then be boosted from the intermediate orbit into the operational plane in which the failure occurred. Regards, Stuart In message <003301c1b40a$5227d7a0$5205a8c0@billm>, Bill Mitchell <escape@velocity.net> writes >Quoting spaceflightnow.com: >"The satellites launched Monday will join seven others that serve as >orbiting spares, ready to replace any of the primary 66 as the craft age and >fail in the future. By having the replacement satellites already in space, >the spares are prepared to enter the constellation and fill any holes as >they open up, keeping the Iridium system rejuvenated and functioning. " > >Couldn't the five new sats only replace ones in the same plane? >They make it sound like they can maneuver to any slot in any plane. >Is this possible? > >Thanks, >Bill Mitchell >42 4' 18" N 80 8' 33" W 733' ASL >www.telescope.150m.com > >----------------------------------------------------------------- >Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' >in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org >http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html > -- Stuart Eves
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