Questions tagged [molniya]
questions about the Molniya series of Soviet military communication satellites.
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Have spherical dish antennae been used with Molniya satellites to avoid switch-over signal loss?
Molniya-orbit communication satellites work well for ground locations near the poles. These high eccentricity, highly inclined orbits, with a period of 12 hours, “loiter” for about 6 hours over the ...
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How would one obtain the longitude of satellite at the apogee?
I know that apogee longitude is a design point in Molniya orbits. Given the classical orbital elements, how can I find this value?
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How exactly did ground stations track the early Molniya satellites?
Wikipedia's Orbita (TV system) says:
Orbita (Russian: орбита) is a Soviet-Russian system of broadcasting and delivering TV signals via satellites. It is considered to be the first national network of ...
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What would be different about satellite orbits if Earth were prolate? Would we have Sun-synchronous and Molniya orbits?
It's hard to imagine how it could happen naturally since on geological timescales the Earth would either be spherical if it didn't rotate, or oblate if it did, but from an orbital mechanical ...
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What are the advantages of a Molniya orbit over a tundra orbit?
As I understand them, Molniya orbits and tundra orbits are very similar: they are both intended to provide satellite coverage over large latitudes and provide a large apogee dwell time over the large ...
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Difference between Tundra and Molniya orbits?
This excellent answer nicely describes both Tundra orbits and Molniya orbits. They are both repeat groundtrack orbits with periods of rational fractions of a sidereal day, and both have inclinations ...
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Why should Molniya orbit period be a half-synodic, not a half-sidereal day?
In the Wikipedia article for Molniya orbit the introduction mentions that the period should be 0.5 sidereal day, so that its path across the sky every ~12 hours as observed from a given point on Earth ...
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What is the large structure in the background of this picture of Molniya 1?
This answer links to an Wikipedia article on the Molniya satellites, which shows the image below of Molniya 1, and what looks like a large structure behind it. The structure appears to be long and ...
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