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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Earth Observations _ Communications Satellites

Posted by: PhilCo126 Jun 12 2008, 08:03 PM

I realise this is an Earth Observation part of the forum, but started a comms satellites topic anyway
Deployment of ICO Global Communications G1 Satellite:

http://www.ssloral.com/

choose NEWS and then click Video Clips
or directly:

http://www.ssloral.com/downloads/videos/ico_reflector_vo_short.wmv

Posted by: nprev Jun 13 2008, 02:09 AM

Hey, that was very, very cool indeed; thanks, Phil!

Man, they must've been sweating bullets throughout that antenna deployment; amazingly complex operation.

Posted by: PhilCo126 Sep 6 2008, 05:52 PM

Talking about communications satellites ( or spy satellite ):
What was the highest orbit used for satellites to observe Earth ( we do not count the geo-stationary satellites at 36000 km ).
I guess the Apogee of Russian Molniya orbits lay around 40000 Km ???

Posted by: mchan Sep 7 2008, 10:37 PM

Well, if you count observing Earth just because it happens to be in its field of view, then consider the old Vela satellites at 100,000 to 110,000 km.

Talking about comsats, a proposed system for what eventually became Milstar had satellites in polar orbit also at about 110,000 km for higher survivability in a nuclear war. Milstar was expensive enough, the earlier system would have been freaking expensive.

Posted by: PhilCo126 Jan 26 2009, 09:19 PM

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090120-dead-satellite-loses-control.html