sattelite station keeping

[hoola]

With a typical comm satelite, what amount of thruster force  is required to keep it in proper position? Thanks

[joigus]

No thrust at all. Just inertia.

[swansont]

3 hours ago, joigus said:

No thrust at all. Just inertia.

The earth isn't a perfect sphere and there are other perturbations, such as the moon. LEO satellites have atmospheric drag (more than higher orbits). Even sunlight affects satellites, making them spin

But the first pass here should be a search, because this is explained in some detail on multiple sites.

e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781483227160500232

[joigus]

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

The earth isn't a perfect sphere and there are other perturbations, such as the moon. LEO satellites have atmospheric drag (more than higher orbits). Even sunlight affects satellites, making them spin

But the first pass here should be a search, because this is explained in some detail on multiple sites.

e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781483227160500232

I see, you're right. Thank you, @swansont. +1

To tell you the truth, I was thinking about possible atmospheric drags to make an edit of self-corrections, but I missed the perturbative factors if you want to keep the orbit periodic, which should have been pretty obvious to me.

[joigus]

Quote

Evil Liar (or so I'm told)

I don't think you deserve that title. "Watchful eye" is more like it. And there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

[swansont]

2 minutes ago, joigus said:

I don't think you deserve that title. "Watchful eye" is more like it. And there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

I chose it myself, under a previous version of the software, in response to an accusation from a crank. Which was coupled with my choice of avatar

Not the first time staff had done that kind of trolling. I kinda miss having those customization options.

 

[hoola]

thanks for the link swansont