In Spacecraft Operations, The Launch and Early Orbit Phase is one of the most critical phases of a mission. Spacecraft operations engineers take control of the satellite after it separates from the launch vehicle up to the time when the satellite is safely positioned in its final orbit.
During this period, operations staff works 24 hours a day to activate, monitor and control the various subsystems of the satellite, including the deployment of any satellite appendages (antennas, solar array, reflector, etc.), and undertake critical orbit and attitude control manoeuvres.
For geostationary satellites, the launch vehicle typically carries the spacecraft to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, or GTO. From this elliptical orbit, the LEOP generally includes a sequence of apogee engine firings to reach the circular geostationary orbit.
Famous quotes containing the words launch, early, orbit and/or phase:
“I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ... and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)