From the point of view of a satellite, it is following a straight path around the Earth, but from the point of view of the ground, it crosses the equator twice during each orbit and reaches a northern and southern latitude equal to the angle it crosses the equator. When a rocket is launched from, say, KSC, is it programmed to fly south of east so that it crosses the equator somewhere over Africa if it is in a 28.5 deg. inclination orbit, or does it just travel east and somehow the axial tilt of the Earth does the job of making it cross the equator twice? I have used a pencil held just above a rotating globe at the latitude of KSC and it remains at the same latitude all the way around. Thanks for any elucidation, and I hope the answer is not so obvious that people will be saying, "Duh!". Clear skies. Roger in Jacksonville, FL. Nice view of the shuttle launch here this morning, BTW! --------------- Roger Curry Jacksonville, Florida Visit the NEFAS Web Site at www.nefas.org Roger's FTP site: ftp://24.129.70.60 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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