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.

Launch latitude

5°

30°

46°

Launch site

Kourou

KSC

Baikonur

orbit

surface

lat45

max

radius

radius

altitude

grav

sidereal

sidereal

launch

insertion velocity

name

period

ping

latitude

velocity

period

velocity

min

ms

degrees

km

earths

km

m/s2

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

m/s

LEO

97

--

17.29

6678

1.05

300

8.94

7726

5431

7531

676

3847

6003

m288

288

63

60.17

12789

2.01

6411

2.44

5583

14393

8667

1118

2726

4072

m360

360

73

63.87

14441

2.26

8063

1.91

5254

17271

8846

1211

2592

4511

m480

480

87

67.70

16756

2.63

10378

1.42

4877

21585

9050

1308

2451

3516

m720

720

110

71.74

20295

3.18

13917

0.97

4432

28774

9287

1404

2297

3188

GEO

fixed

253

81.33

42164

6.61

35786

0.22

3075

86164

9954

1511

1860

2281

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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

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