Tetrahedral satellite constellation for complete coverage.

[CaptainKipard]

I've found this thread and I'd like to use this for my comsat network but putting it into practice without simply rendezvous'ing with existing markers seems a little difficult. Has anyone done this? Can I deploy this network with a single mission or two missions at most? If so, how? I can achieve the eccentricity and inclination with no problem but I'm not sure how to get the true anomaly timed correctly for all satellites.

Thanks for helping.

[MaverickSawyer]

You can deploy a three-sat mission with ease. Go to the synchronous orbital altitude, circularize, then burn into an elliptical orbit 2/3 the period of the existing one (i.e. 4 hours on Kerbin). Decouple your satellites, then once per orbit, burn one of them back into synchronous orbit. dV intensive, but more accurate than anything else I can think of.

[docfish]

EDIT: *sigh* should have clicked the link to see what you meant, sorry late at night brain broken. Well what comes after this won't be precise enough to be of any use seeing as how precisely you'd need to position it all. Still I'll leave it in case someone else runs across this and actually wants to do what I thought you wanted (which rereading it again... man how did I misread your request so badly lol) So again, yeah this won't help you across multiple planes like that.

One trick I've used to do triangular satellite deployments with multiple launches might actually work with some fiddling (I'd never considered the 2/3 orbit thing, may have to try it sometime), it'd probably take someone smarter than me (or a few trial runs) to turn it into a working plan. I'd put my first satellite up in it's final orbit, then put the next one in a lower parking orbit, then when directly across the center body from the lower one (phase angle 180 yes? sorry it's late and I'm a little fried), I'd burn for the higher final orbit before circularizing. Obviously this wouldn't do exactly what you want, but while I was tweaking that I experimented with burning before that point and got what might actually be usable for what you want. Granted at the time it wasn't what I wanted at all, so I didn't really make a point to do it repeatedly lol. Unless someone can give you something more precise (and lets face it, it can hardly be less precise than what I sketched out), quicksave is your friend, as is rotating to facing down in map view to eyeball the results

Edited February 22, 2014 by docfish
Should have clicked the link first >.<

[MaverickSawyer]

See, now that's why understanding orbital mechanics is helpful.

[CaptainKipard]

I could be a real a*#hole right about now, MaverickSawyer. We're living in an information age, there's really no excuse for not knowing a simple shape like the tetrahedron. Also I really don't understand how anyone could possibly think that a three-satellite coplanar arrangement gives you complete coverage.

To be fair, your answer and that of docfish is perfectly valid, it's just that it's an answer to a different question than the one I posed.

[Rhomphaia]

I remember that thread, and remember devising a method to create a constellation like that from a single launch. used Kerbal alarm clock and mechjeb

Bit hazy on the specifics, but from what I recall, the carrier used an orbit 1.5 times the period of the target orbit with periapsis at the altitude of a circular orbit with the target period.

Each satellite would release and circularize, then would burn to inclination an consistant time after circularization ( sats 1 and three burn X minutes after and burn Normal, sats two and four burn 1/4 of the orbital period + X minutes and burn Anti-Normal IIRC)

The next part was the Eccentricity burn, Had to calculate the time in the target orbit between the acending/descending node and the point where r=a and burn to eccentricity at that point.

[CaptainKipard]

Thanks Rhomphaia, but it's the specifics that I'm after. I'm really bad at following vague instructions. If you ever find the time maybe you could post a tutorial in the tutorial section. I'd be grateful and I'm sure others would be too.