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Satellite Ground Tracks
The Six Classical Orbital Elements allow us to describe what an orbit looks like in space. What we need to know next is what part of the Earth the satellite is passing over at any given time. A groundtrack shows the location on the Earth that the spacecraft flies directly over during its orbital path around the Earth. To understand groungtracks, we need to know the following: The groundtrack follows what is called a great circle route around the Earth. A great circle is any circle which cuts through the center of the Earth. All groundtrack drawings use the latitude/longitude system. 
Latitude: The latitude measures how far north or south a point lies off the equator. The equator is at zero degrees latitude, the North Pole is at 90 north latitude and the South Pole is at 90 degrees South latitude. Longitude: The longitude measures how far east or west a point lies from an imaginary line that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole through Greenwich, England (or the Prime Meridian). The longitude varies from 0 degrees at the prime Meridian to 180 degrees west and 180 east.
How does this effect the groundtracks? Even though the spacecraft orbit stays fixed in space, the Earth rotates to the east. So to a point fixed on the Earth, the spacecraft appears to shift to the west during successive orbits. 
The highest latitude reached by a satellite orbit is equal to its inclination. To illustrate this concept, the following groundtracks represent orbits with the same period, but A has an inclination of 10 degrees, B has an inclination of 30 degrees, C has an inclination of 50 degrees, and D has an inclination of 85 degrees. 
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