Polar Orbits

[The Man Myth and Legend]

If NASA launched a satilitte to a PERFECT polar orbit would ot go over the True north or Magnetic North?

[Confused Scientist]

It would fly over the true north pole. Interestingly, after the Vandenberg polar STS launch facilities were discontinued due to Challenger, NASA could have extended the SRBs to allow the shuttle to fly a "dog-leg" trajectory into a polar orbit from the KSC while avoiding the endangerment of people below the flight path. The extended SRBs would have also eliminated the potential need for an RTLS or TAL abort.

[YNM]

True north and south. Because magnetic deviations can be easily corrected.

The orbit would be nudged out of such position after a while, however.

Usual "polar orbits" actually have inclinations greater than 90 deg.

Edited October 22, 2017 by YNM

[magnemoe]

You can not orbit above the magnetic pole, that is unless your orbital period is 24 hours 

note that you rarely want an exact polar orbit, you can look to the sides and still observer the poles in an 80 degree or lower inclined orbit, depending a bit of attitude 

[Bill Phil]

Inclination is relative to the equator. So, I guess it would be the North Pole of rotation.

[DerekL1963]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

note that you rarely want an exact polar orbit, you can look to the sides and still observer the poles in an 80 degree or lower inclined orbit, depending a bit of attitude 

Polar orbits are rarely about looking at the poles.   They're usually about a ground track that repeats at short intervals and covers a large percentage of the earth's surface.  That's why polar and near polar orbits are popular with spy satellites and earth observation birds.

[YNM]

More clarification :

It is actually possible to have groundtracks going over the magnetic north pole or south pole repeatedly.

But I don't think you can have both. The magnetic axis doesn't intersect Earth's "center".

[PB666]

Magnetic North moves.

Also A polar orbit passes over the both magnetic poles. A 100 minute polar orbit passes to within a few kilometers every twenty four hours. The Earth rotates under the orbit. There are 14.4 orbits a day however radiating 28.8 orbits per day at each pole. The Geomagnetic north poles is at 86.5 degrees. A degree at the equator is 60 nautical miles or 110,600 meters. The cosine of 85.6 is 0.0610. 110,600 Cos 85.6 = 6,746 meters. If a satellite cross from equator to NP or vice versa each orbit, and the number of orbits a day is not an even whole number then it creates ~ 29 areas everyday. 360/29 on average differing by 12.413 degrees however its closest proximity on either side are 6.206 degrees which is means the satellited passes within 41 kilometers of the north or south pole every day. Within a week it will pass within 5 kilometer. The magnetic pole of the earth has been moving 35 kilometer each year in a western direction. This means it moves 0.673 km per week. Thus a magnetical polar orbit would in about 2 months, obviate any need to have a magnetic polar orbit. In addition since the satellite would hold magnetic north the longest if the equatorial path was set to 86.5,  and south magentic pole is less than 86.5 degrees, then it would be and not 90 degrees, the more intelligent magnetic pole crossing spacecraft would simply  have an inclination of 86.5' allowing clustered  mulitple north crossings per day and a few close crossings of the south pole.

[kerbiloid]

Then I believe that some unexpectable bug in the software would be crashing the system every time when it passes zero coordinates.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17324/airplane-software-crash-caused-by-zero-negative-altitude-at-dead-sea

Edited October 23, 2017 by kerbiloid