Orbital shell (spaceflight)

In spaceflight, an orbital shell is a set of artificial satellites in circular orbits at a certain fixed altitude.[1]

Use in satellite constellations

In the design of satellite constellations, an orbital shell usually refers to a collection of circular orbits with the same altitude and, oftentimes, orbital inclination, distributed evenly in celestial longitude (and mean anomaly). For a sufficiently high inclination and altitude the orbital shell covers the entire orbited body. In other cases the coverage extends up to a certain maximum latitude.

Several existing satellite constellations typically use a single orbital shell. New large megaconstellations have been proposed that consist of multiple orbital shells.[1][2]

List of orbital shells

Notable orbital shells of Earth in use
Orbital altitude (km) Inclination Planes Satellites Name
550 53° ~10 (deployed)
72 (planned)
~360 (deployed)
1584 (planned)
Starlink[1]
781 86.4° 6 66 Iridium
19,130 64°8' 3 24 GLONASS
20,180 55° 6 24 GPS
21,150 55° 3 24 BeiDou
23,222 56° 3 24 Galileo
gollark: We were looking at using a derivative of RFC 1149, but currently it just uses a static archive of compiled osmarks.tk code on the USB stick.
gollark: no.
gollark: It must be very boring.
gollark: Or, rather, osmarks.tk is accessible from there.
gollark: Those are accessible via our experimental "USB stick plus hypervelocity railgun" service.

See also

References

  1. SPACEX NON-GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE SYSTEM, Attachment A, TECHNICAL INFORMATION TO SUPPLEMENT SCHEDULE S, US Federal Communications Commission, 8 November 2018, accessed 19 November 2019.
  2. "Amazon lays out constellation service goals, deployment and deorbit plans to FCC". SpaceNews.com. 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
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