Garmaine asked 3 years ago
Previous "method to the maddness" questions: 1, 2.
The image below is from Why does TDRS 1's inclination evolve so much differently than that of all the others starting in 1995? and I've used it a few other places as well:
- Why do the geosynchronous TDRS satellites have this distribution of inclinations?
- How can I “debounce” these TDRS satellite inclinations? (reconstruct the zero-crossings
Today I just noticed that in the early 2000's there was an existing triplet of TDRS satellites whose inclination was around 6 degrees and increasing and a new triplet deployed also at about 6 degrees, but also such that their inclination is decreasing!
Once those three (TDRS 8, 9, and 10) bottomed out and turned around and reached about 6 degrees continuing to increase, a second triplet was deployed at 6 degrees with decreasing inclination!
Questions:
- When one deploys a satellite in geostationary orbit, how does one choose to deploy it in either an increasing or decreasing inclination state?
- Why are these TDRS triplets deployed in this manner?
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