05-March-2006, 04:51 AM
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Senior Member
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Beijing, China
Posts: 415
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by ToSeek
It will be in a near-polar orbit referred to as "Sun-synchronous," i.e., whenever MRO crosses the equator going north-to-south, it will be about 3 pm (Mars time) directly beneath the spacecraft. MGS (2 pm) and Mars Odyssey (5 pm) have similar orbits, with MGS having an orbit inclination of 93 degrees, where 90 is a perfect polar orbit, so it's not far off. It's also a standard approach taken for Earth-observation missions, like Landsat and EO-1.
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From JPL Horizons, all Orbiter UTC, altitudes are geodetic, longitudes are planetocentric:
Quote:
2006-03-10 21:21:14 UTC, alt = 1000 km, lat = 73° S, lon = 285° E
2006-03-10 21:22:03 UTC, alt = 900 km, lat = 76° S, lon = 282° E
2006-03-10 21:22:57 UTC, alt = 800 km, lat = 80° S, lon = 278° E
2006-03-10 21:23:55 UTC, alt = 700 km, lat = 83° S, lon = 268° E
2006-03-10 21:25:02 UTC, alt = 600 km, lat = 86° S, lon = 232° E
2006-03-10 21:26:21 UTC, alt = 500 km, lat = 85° S, lon = 155° E
2006-03-10 21:28:09 UTC, alt = 400 km, lat = 78° S, lon = 130° E
2006-03-10 21:31:20 UTC, alt = 329 km, lat = 63° S, lon = 120° E
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as above, you can find the spacecraft will be very close to Mars south pole, maximum latitude 86.72° S at 21:25:26 UTC, this will result a large inclination of the orbit.
Note, the planetocentric longitude is measured range from 0° E to 360° E for Mars and other planets/moons rotates from west to east.
Last edited by yaohua2000; 06-March-2006 at 10:44 PM.
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