Nodal period - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

The nodal period of a satellite is the time between successive passages of a satellite through successive orbital nodes. This applies to artificial, such as weather satellites, and natural satellites the moon. The nodal period of Earth's moon is 27.2122 days.

Near Earth-Satellites

The oblateness of the Earth has important effects of the orbits of near Earth-satellites. An expression for the nodal period ( T n ) of a near circular orbit, such that the eccentricity (ε) is almost but not equal to zero, is:

T n = 2 π a 3 2 μ 1 2 [ 1 − 3 J 2 ( 4 − 5 sin 2 ⁡ i ) 4 ( a R ) 2 ( 1 − ϵ 2 ( 1 + ϵ cos ⁡ ω ) 2 − 3 J 2 ( 1 − ϵ cos ⁡ ω ) 3 2 ( a R ) 2 ( 1 − ϵ 2 ) 3 ]

References

Nodal period Wikipedia

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