Thursday 24 September 2009

artificial satellite - How much time does the ISS take to repeat its orbit?

Objects in orbit pass over the surface above what's commonly called their ground track. For objects in low earth orbit, though they go around the earth every 1.5 or more hours, the Earth rotates beneath them so they don't trace a simple "circle" over the same points on land.
Ground track - NASA image from Wikipedia



The orbit is around the Earth in a fixed plane, so we are likely (but not guaranteed) to see the satellite pass over 12 or 24 hours later.

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