Hi: The reason for the GPS orbits is so that the ground track repeats.
Have Fun, Brooke > > On 10/10/2012 8:00 AM, [email protected] wrote: >>> [email protected] said: >>>> >>The satellites are in 12 hour orbits. Everything repeats every 12 >>>> hours. >>>> >>But the sun is on a 24 hr. period and if you did two 12 hour tests >>>> you don't >>>> >>want to do one at night and one in day. So start each test at the >>>> same >>>> >>time of day let it run for 12+ hours. >>> > >>> >Thanks. >>> > >>> >After poking around a bit... >>> > >>> >That's 12 Sidereal hours rather than 12 UTC hours. >> Rarther, it's 11 hours and 58 minutes UTC. >> >> It revolves about 2x366.35 times the globe over a year. I don't remember >> why they choose such an orbit, but it has its uses. >> >> Cheers, >> Magnus > > Isn't that half of a sidereal day? A sidereal day being ~4 minutes > shorter than UTC day... > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
