vendredi 21 février 2014

Tracking Polar-orbiting Satellites

I have been attempting to write my own program to calculate the position of polar-orbiting satellites. To verify the correctness of my program, I obtained the equator crossing data for an environmental satellite. I was not able to match the equator crossing data. What I found is that the longitudinal difference between successive crossings was larger in my program than in the equator crossing data file that I obtained.



My investigation showed that if I multiplied the time difference between successive equator crossings in the file by the standard value for the Earth's rotation rate, 7.292115x10^-5 radians/second, I get the same longitudinal separation as my program calculated. This value differs from the longitudinal separation in the file by apparently the ratio between the lengths of a sidereal day and the length of a solar day. Can anyone explain this discrepancy to me?





via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/1czRqPL

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