Orbit Molniya

Orbit Molniya (Rusia: Молния; IPA: [molnʲɪjə] (mendengarkan), "Lightning") adalah jenis orbit yang sangat elips dengan kemiringan 63,4 derajat, argumen dari perigee dari -90 derajat dan periode orbit satu setengah hari sidereal. Molniya orbit diberi nama setelah serangkaian satelit komunikasi Soviet / Rusia Molniya yang telah menggunakan jenis orbit ini sejak pertengahan 1960-an.

Figure 1: The Molniya orbit. Usually the period from perigee +2 hours to perigee +10 hours is used to transmit to the northern hemisphere

Groundtrack of Molniya orbit. In the operational part of the orbit from apogee −3 hours to apogee +3 hours the satellite is north of 55.5° N (latitude of for example central Scotland, Moscow and southern part of Hudson Bay)

Untuk mendapatkan cakupan elevasi tinggi terus menerus dari belahan bumi utara, setidaknya tiga pesawat ruang angkasa Molniya yang diperlukan.

Referensi

• Molniya Orbits 2016-01-31 di Wayback Machine. by Jerry Jon Sellers
• Orbital Mechanics by Robert A. Braeunig
• Molniya-1 spacecraft by Mark Wade of Encyclopedia Astronautica
• JAVA applet animating the orbit of a satellite 2011-07-19 di Wayback Machine. in an elliptic Kepler orbit around the Earth. For a Molniya orbit, set the semi-major axis to 26562 km and eccentricity to 0.74105.
• Real time satellite tracking for a typical Molniya satellite
• 3D Molniya constellation viewer 2008-04-07 di Wayback Machine. (no longer available)
• illustration of the communication geometry provided by satellites in 12-hour Molniya orbits (video)