> This is pure speculation, but I wonder whether this could be the "8X" that > was much talked about in the late 1990's, but has yet to put in > appearance. If so, then I like your long-ago speculation about a highly > elliptical, sun-synchronous, retrograde critical inclination orbit: > http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/eist-iv.htm Well, my ego would be just so pleased if that were to turn out to be right. And, in fact, my favorite story for explaining the upcoming T4B launch is that it is, indeed, an 8X CRYSTAL/KH-11 modification pulled off the shelf to act as a gap-filler imaging sat while the Future Imaging Architecture tries to get un-FIAscoed. > Something around 116.6 deg, 630 X 7600 km would do the job nicely. It > would make 8 rev/d, and its apogee would be about 8 times that of a > standard KeyHole orbit. Could either characteristic have been the origin > of the "8X" moniker? The general kind of orbit does have a lot of attractive features, as noted in the earlier message. I really have no idea where the "8X" came from -- I'd thought it might have to do with coverage -- but your suggestion makes as much sense. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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