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Interesting.

Just looked up why Israel launches them retrograde (counter to the Earth's rotation which costs more energy to launch). It's so launch debris doesn't land in populated areas, it lands in the unpopulated Mediterranean instead. Make sense.

Also these fully orbit the earth in 90 minutes, so theoretically you could get more time-resolution out of retrograde orbiting satellites (though I'm guessing there are other benefits of going with the Earth's rotation).



The energy requirement is the massive reason why launches are primarily prograde.

Even the time resolution you mentioned isn't much of and advantage of retrograde because a prograde satellite can get the same period at a lower altitude.




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