Artificial Satellites in Retrograde Orbit

Artificial Satellites In Retrograde Orbit

Artificial satellites are rarely placed in retrograde orbit. This is partly due to the extra velocity (and fuel) required to go against the direction of the rotation of the Earth.

Most commercial earth observing satellites use retrograde orbit, and almost all communication satellites use prograde orbits.

Read more about Artificial Satellites In Retrograde Orbit:  Examples, Space Warfare and Accidents

Famous quotes containing the words artificial, satellites and/or orbit:

    What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    To the Japanese, Portugal and Russia are neutral enemies, England and America are belligerent enemies, and Germany and her satellites are friendly enemies. They draw very fine distinctions.
    Jerome Cady, U.S. screenwriter, and Lewis Milestone. Peter Voroshevski (Howard Clinton?)

    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)