Question by : What direction did Sputnik fly through space?
I recently found out that comets fly through space with their tails flying out away from the sun, not streaking behind the comet. So, when a comet is flying away from the sun, it’s tail will flare in front. So, it got me thinking: Did Sputnik fly through space with its various antennae streaking behind it, or did it fly with the antennae pointing toward the Earth, or what?
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Answer by Big Jebb
east
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tham153 says
Generally you want the antenna to point at Earth. It is likely all three satellites called Sputnik achieved this, since there was no fade out of the signal attributable to a rotation effect.
Raymond says
Comet appear to have a “directionality” because the tail is made up of stuff that actually gets pushed by the tiny photons of sunlight.
The stuff in a comet’s tail is made up of extremely tiny grains of dust and of individual gas molecules. These things are so tiny that being “hit” by a photon of light will actually cause them to move (ever so slightly).
The tail is in front of the receding comet because the tiny grains and molecules are actually being “pushed” ahead of the comet.
Sputnik was way too massive for that, and its antennae are tied to the thing, so they can’t very well be “blown away”
Sputnik was launched towards the east, to take advantage of Earth’s rotation (which adds a bit less than a half km/s to the eastward speed of launched objects), which is a saving in fuel and energy for the rocket.
Had the antennae been longer (and more massive) they would have tended to line up with the direction of the gravity gradiant (antennae either pointing directly towards Earth’s centre or directly away from it).
However, at Sputnik’s altitude, there may have still been enough air molecules to cause a tiny bit of friction. In that case, the antennae would have acted like the feathers on an arrow, trailing behind the satellite (i.e., antennae pointing west as the satellite goes east).
Also, I suspect that, for proper deployment, the spherical satellite was stashed in the nose area with its antennae pointing back (into the body of the rocket) so that they don’t catch on anything on the way out, as the launcer finishes its push and gets dropped behind. So Sputnik would have started its orbital movement with the antennae trailing behind, making very likely that it probably remained in this orientation… IF (a big if) it had a stable orientation.
oklatonola says
Which Sputnik? There were two of them. Artificial satellites are NOT COMETS.