Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by beamatronic 3543 days ago
Could you infer the orbit of the satellite from the location of the X's?
3 comments

If you had an image taken by the satellite and the time the image was taken, then yes. Google maps doesn't make it obvious but not all satellite images are taken from directly overhead. Most are off angle, so by calculating the distance on the film between known points on the earth, you could have a pretty good idea of the location of the satellite.when the picture was taken.
I don't think so, since they'll cover all (or nearly all) of the earth the information that a satellite at an unknown time could see this spot doesn't tell you much.
no because you get just one point in time and to compute an orbit you'd need three (or the apogeo/perigeo + another)