"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message
...
Roy Smith wrote in news:roy-
:

The Sirius Satellite Radio (www.sirius.com) says:

"our three state-of-the-art satellites that rotate in figure eight,
geo-synchronous orbits around the earth"

I know what a geo synchronous orbit is, but what's the "figure eight"
part all about?

A geosynchronous orbit with a non-zero inclination angle will have a
groundtrack resembling a figure eight. See:

http://celestrak.com/columns/v04n07/


Hmm, this is a great page on this. To be honest, I'd never really thought
about what a geosynch orbit would look like to an observer on the ground.
Thanks Jorge.