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A satellite ground track may be thought of as a path along the Earth's surface that traces the movement of an imaginary line between the satellite and the center of the Earth. In other words, the ground track is the set of points at which the satellite will pass directly overhead, or cross the zenith, in the frame of reference of a ground observer.
Ground track example from Heavens-Above.An observer in Sicily can see the International Space Station when it enters the circle at 9:26 p.m. The observer would see a bright object appear in the northwest, which would move across the sky to a point almost overhead, where it disappears from view, in the space of three minutes.
The ground track of a satellite in a Tundra orbit is a closed figure 8 with a smaller loop over either the northern or southern hemisphere. [1] [2] This differentiates them from Molniya orbits designed to service high-latitude regions, which have the same inclination but half the period and do not loiter over a single region. [3] [4]
Visible pass of the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Atlantis over Tampa, Florida, on mission STS-132, May 18, 2010 (five-minute exposure). An orbital pass (or simply pass) is the period in which a spacecraft is above the local horizon, and thus available for line-of-sight communication with a given ground station, receiver, or relay satellite, or for visual sighting.
Geostationary satellite imagery has been used for tracking volcanic ash, [37] measuring cloud top temperatures and water vapour, oceanography, [38] measuring land temperature and vegetation coverage, [39] [40] facilitating cyclone path prediction, [34] and providing real time cloud coverage and other tracking data. [41]
The longitude of the ascending node (bright green) as a part of a diagram of orbital parameters.. The longitude of the ascending node, also known as the right ascension of the ascending node, is one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in space.
A Sun-synchronous orbit is useful for imaging, reconnaissance, and weather satellites, [4] because every time that the satellite is overhead, the surface illumination angle on the planet underneath it is nearly the same.
A two-line element set (TLE, or more rarely 2LE) or three-line element set (3LE) is a data format encoding a list of orbital elements of an Earth-orbiting object for a given point in time, the epoch.