Darwin Teague wrote: > The lower the orbit, the faster a sat has to go to counteract gravity. yes. > Even at 220 miles up, there is enough atmosphere to gradually slow the > ISS. Therefore it needs to boost itself into a higher orbit periodically. > > Am I right so far? yes. And to say it explicitely: Atmospheric friction makes a satellite go *faster*. That's weird. > If so, why does slowing it down make it go down and not up? The point is that an orbit boost increases the orbital energy of a satellite. Orbital energy is the sum of potential energy and kinetic energy. If push a satellite int a higher orbit, you *increase* the potential and you decrease the kinteic energy. The sum of both parts is larger than before the manoeuvre. atmospheric friction does it the ither way round: It decreases potential and increases kinetic energy, and the sum is smaller than before. Hope that helps. Regards, Rainer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Nov 23 2008 - 18:21:10 UTC