orbit articles
Do satellites require propulsion?
The necessity of propulsion for an orbiting object is not always intuitive; after all, once a satellite is launched, it ...
What makes satellites orbit the Earth?
The simple visual of a machine circling our world often conjures the question of how it manages to hang suspended in the...
What is the path followed by a planet called?
The curved line traced by a planet as it moves around a star, or any celestial object around another, has a specific sci...
Are there satellites in low Earth orbit?
The region we call Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, is currently the busiest highway in space, densely populated with functionin...
How does clearing the neighborhood define a planet?
The concept of a celestial body having "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit is the most critical, and often most ...
What does it mean to clear an orbit of debris?
The concept of "clearing an orbit of debris" sounds straightforward—like sweeping up litter in a park—but in the realm o...
What happens to broken Starlink satellites?
The appearance of a bright streak in the night sky that isn't a meteor is often a sign that something unusual is happeni...
Is the ISS technically not in space?
The International Space Station, or ISS, is an extraordinary feat of engineering, continuously circling our planet many ...
What exactly is the ecliptic?
This is the conceptual line where the celestial sphere seems to meet the plane of Earth's path around the Sun. That imag...
What is a string of satellites called?
When people look up into the night sky and see a distinct, slow-moving line of bright lights, sometimes described as a c...
How many LEO satellites for global coverage?
The scale of hardware being placed into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to achieve truly global connectivity is perhaps the most s...
How many geostationary satellites are required for global coverage?
The simple question of how many geostationary satellites are needed to blanket the Earth reveals a fascinating interplay...
What does orbital debris mean?
The seemingly infinite void above our atmosphere is, in reality, quite cluttered. When we talk about **orbital debris**,...
What is the best explanation for the close-in orbits of hot Jupiters?
The discovery of exoplanets radically reshaped our understanding of planetary systems, but few findings were as surprisi...
What is the apparent path of the Sun along the celestial sphere or equivalently the plane determined by the Earth's orbit called?
The apparent path traced by the Sun across the background stars over the course of a year, which also corresponds to the...