The first satellite I analyzed was GOES – 7. I chose this one because it was in a geostationary orbit around the earth. GOES – 7 was designed to watch meteorological conditions from a fixed point on the earth, so it had to be geostationary. It sends continuous vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature and moisture to forecasters and private interests on the ground. GOES – 7 replaced its older brother GOES – 5.

Next I checked out PROGRESS – M 59, I chose it because it was a manned satellite. Her purpose was to deliver 2.56 tons of cargo. PROGRESS M 59 carried 1120 kg of propellant, 51 kg of oxygen, 266 kg of foodstuff, 344 kg of atmospheric revitalization system equipment (including Electron system oxygen generators and solid fuel oxygen generators), 100 kg of crew health care aids1. This orbit is very close to earth and its like that because it is a manned satellite. The cargo on board needs to be available, so it needs to be within reach.

The XMM is a satellite with a very high eccentricity. I went looking around for a deep space satellite because I knew that if I were to find a high eccentricity satellite that it would have to be far from the earth. XMM stands for X-ray Multi-Mirror telescope. This satellite is observing space and telling us on ground what it sees. We can explore space with a telescope from our front porch, but we wanted to go deeper. That is why this telescope has such an elliptical shape, it needed to get out there so we could see further.

The piece of space junk I looked at was FENGYUN 1C DEB. This is debris from china’s weather satellite that we discussed in class. Most of the pieces from the explosion stayed near the original orbit, but some have deviated and this is simply due to the sudden burst of velocity they experienced from the explosion. There are 1,336 pieces large enough to be seen and documented on celestrak.

I chose to view the orbit of ALSAT 1 because it was a disaster monitoring satellite. It is one of a constellation for daily disaster monitoring. It is equipped wit 2 cameras so it can monitor the earth. The field of view of the cameras allows the constellation to monitor the entire earth in a span of 24 hours. ALSAT – 1 is in a sun-synchronous retrograde circular orbit2. The satellite has to be in this orbit because it is carefully calculated so that all in the constellation can see the entire earth with no blind spots.

Finally I observed the moon. The moon is far away but is still under the influence of earths gravity. The moon usually looks the same from earth and that is confirmed by the eccentricity of the moons orbit at nearly 0.