International Space Station And Hubble Telescope Orbits

An orbiting spacecraft tends to move nearly in a plane. The Space Station is intended partly for earth observation so it has an orbit at high inclination to the equator such that it passes over the higher latitudes as the earth spins below it, giving it good coverage of the earth's surface. That is why in this animation, with a time around the current time of year, it is passing over the northern lands repeatedly in the dark. If it stays always in this same plane the best chance of seeing it lit by the sun against a dark sky from England, for example, is around the change from summer to autumn or from winter to spring. This animation helps to see that.
Last summer there was something of a celebration in Britain involving the Space Station and the Space Shuttle passing overhead and I happened to see them without knowing in advance that they were going to be visible. I saw a bright light coming in from the west around twilight so it probably was the Space Station and Shuttle combination.
Because the Hubble Telescope is for astronomy it has an orbit inclined at a smaller angle to the earth's equator than the Space Station's orbit - approximately in the plane of the ecliptic; that is the plane that the planets move in.
The orbits are in front of the earth when moving to the right and behind when moving to the left. The animation was made with the Celestia Open Universe program.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• international
• space
• station
• hubble
• telescope
• nasa
• orbit
• shuttle
• astronomy
• ecliptic

[Chrisjr2007]

Celestia :D