Launching Thinsats

Thinsats are deployed in an approximately equatorial orbit, so that the ground antennas can have a fixed elevation above the horizon. An inclined m288 orbit would change elevation up and down 5 times per day.

orbit

surface

lat45

max

radius

radius

altitude

grav

sidereal

sidereal

Kourou, 5

KSC, 29

Baikonur, 46

name

period

ping

latitude

period

velocity

launch

apogee

launch

apogee

launch

apogee

min

ms

degrees

km

earths

km

m/s2

sec

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

LEO

97

--

17.29

6678

1.05

300

8.94

5431

7726

7532

672

7589

3825

7673

5968

m288

288

63

60.17

12789

2.01

6411

2.44

14393

5583

8669

1102

8725

2502

8809

3705

m360

360

73

63.87

14441

2.26

8063

1.91

17271

5254

8848

1196

8904

2354

9051

4027

m480

480

87

67.70

16756

2.63

10378

1.42

21585

4877

9051

1295

9108

2206

9192

3096

m720

720

110

71.74

20295

3.18

13917

0.97

28774

4432

9289

1393

9345

2055

9429

2758

GEO

fixed

253

81.33

42164

6.61

35786

0.22

86164

3075

9956

1505

10013

1694

10096

1940

MoreLater

This is the old version 1 design, silicon and glass. Version 5 uses an aluminum substrate

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Thinsats peeled off the top of a cylinder of thinsats. The thickness is greatly exaggerated. There will actually be thousands of thinsats in a stack this tall, at about the same spacing as sheets of paper in a ream of paper.

Mechanically, the stack resembles a solid cylinder of silicon with three adjoining cylinders of glass. The heights of glass and silicon layers must be well matched, and the thermal expansion differences between silicon and glass accommodated, to prevent mechanical strain from vibration during launch, and thermal strain when the cylinders cool

MoreLater

LaunchingV01 (last edited 2014-09-13 03:27:52 by KeithLofstrom)