Orbit Characteristics The CHAMP satellite was launched with a Russian COSMOS launch vehicle on July 15, 2000 into an almost circular, near polar (i = 87) orbit with an initial altitude of 454 km. The design lifetime of the satellite system is 5 years. The 87 degree inclination is the maximu ...
With a completely new generation of low-orbiting satellites, equipped with highly precise inter-satellite and accelerometry-instrumentation observing the Earth gravitational field and its temporal variability, space geodesy has entered the 21 century. Section 1.2 had a leading role in setting up th ...