Lloyd wrote, in part: > the torque from solar radiation tends to balance out across the > craft thanks to symmetry - unless the body is shadowing a large > proportion of the furthest panel, which tends to lead to rotation > to counter the shadowing. And yet dead-GEO spin-up is extremely common. (Superbird A has been accelerating ever since we first started measuring it 6+ years ago). All it takes is a small difference in reflectivity/emissivity between the left panel and the right panel, and you've got your angular acceleration. And all other factors being equal, if your arrays are in the "I" configuration, your satellite is going to spin up faster than if they are in the "H" configuration. --Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Dec 25 2002 - 23:50:02 EST