Why satellites are launched from east coast

Then, when the spacecraft is headed in the same direction as Earth's orbital motion around the sun, the rocket gives it a final boost out of Earth orbit and on its way. Using both the rotational motion of Earth on its axis and the orbital motion of Earth around the Sun, we can save a lot of fuel and a lot of time in getting to our far distant destination!

Where do we want to go? Once we know that, we figure out the best time of year to launch based on where Earth will be in its orbit around the sun. Deep Space 1 will actually end up in orbit around the sun, too, but farther from the sun than we are.

The launch was timed so that, after eight months or so of thrusting from Deep Space 1's ion engine, the spacecraft's orbit crossed the orbit of Asteroid Braille on July 29, As a glass window is an opening in a wall, a launch window is an opening in time.

Usually, engineers will try for the beginning of the first launch window. However, several things can delay a launch. For example, the weather might be bad. Or something might suddenly look a little funny with the spacecraft or the rocket or the ground communications. Or a boat or airplane might appear, even though they've been warned to keep their distance.

Any of these could cause a delay until the next launch window or later in the same launch window. Launch a rocket from a spinning planet. Related: How to watch the historic SpaceX astronaut launch online. But the technology was, literally, outgrowing the test range there. At the time, several military programs had the goal of reaching great distances. But in order to reach that goal, such programs needed the ability to track the rocket throughout the range, Starr said.

Should something go wrong, rocket engineers also wanted to be sure that rockets would land benignly, preferably in an ocean. It was selected for two reasons: the fact that it is relatively near to the equator compared with other U. An East Coast location was desirable because any rockets leaving Earth's surface and traveling eastward get a boost from the Earth's west-to-east spin.

A West Coast location would either send rockets over populated areas or have to contend with launching against the direction of the spin. Surface velocity of rotation varies from one point to the other. Near the equator it is km per hour or meters in a second. Velocity is seen to reduce towards the poles and is almost zero at the poles. Reason for an eastward launch- Satellites launched from the sites near equator in the direction of east, they will get an initial boost equal to the velocity of earth's surface.

This initial boost aids in reducing cost of rockets used to launch satellites.