From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) is an elliptic orbit characterized by a relatively low-altitude perigee and an extremely high-altitude apogee. These extremely elongated orbits can have the advantage of long dwell times at a point in the sky during the approach to and descent from apogee. Visibility near apogee can exceed twelve hours of dwell at apogee with a much shorter and faster-moving perigee phase. Bodies moving through the long apogee dwell can appear still in the sky to the ground when the orbit is at the right inclination, where the angular velocity of the orbit in the equatorial plane closely matches the rotation of the surface beneath. This makes these elliptical orbits useful for communications satellites.

The image shows how Sirius Satellite Radio uses HEO orbits to keep two satellites positioned above North America while another satellite quickly sweeps through the southern part of its 24-hour orbit. The longitude above which the satellites dwell at apogee in the small loop remains relatively constant as the Earth rotates. The three separate orbits are spaced equally around the Earth, but share a common groundtrack.

Examples of HEO orbits offering visibility over Earth's polar regions, which most geosynchronous satellites lack:

• Molniya orbit, after the Soviet communications satellites which used such an orbit.
• Tundra orbit, also developed for Soviet use, but only used by US Sirius Satellite Radio.

Much of Russia is at high latitude, so geostationary orbit does not provide full coverage of the region. These Soviet HEO orbits include polar coverage.

• List of orbits

P.W. Fortescue, L.J. Mottershead, G. Swinerd, and J.P.W. Stark. Spacecraft Systems Engineering. John Wiley and Sons, 2003. Section 5.7: highly elliptic orbits.

This spacecraft- or satellite-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.