On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 8:29:41 PM UTC+5:30, Alain Fournier wrote:
On 04/17/2013 8:06 PM, Steve Willner wrote:

In article ,

Smit Kamal writes:

I was wondering if a satellite is in sun synchronous orbit and

if it completes 14 orbits per day then will the satellite be passing over

one particular location on the earth twice a day.ie 7 am in morning and 7 p

m at evening or will it pass over one location on the earth only once.



Twice a day, once going northbound and once southbound. Imagine

yourself near the Sun looking back at the Earth with the satellite

going round. From that perspective, the Earth rotates once in 24

hours, and a given spot on Earth (at least a spot not near either

pole) passes under the satellite path twice.



As I said in an other post, if it passes exactly over your head while

northbound, it is unlikely to past exactly over your head while southbound.



Of course, because not all days are 24 hours according to apparent solar

time, if the satellite passes exactly over your head, it is unlikely to

pass again exactly over your head 24 hours later. So one can assume less

precision and then yes, there will be one orbit where it will pass "not

too far" from your location on the southbound leg, but in that case "not

too far" could be about 13 degrees of longitude for a satellite doing 14

orbits per day.





Alain Fournier

could you please explain the eclipse patterns in the sunsynchronous orbits which are not experiencing van allen radiations and the altitude is around 800km.