From: henry@spsystems.net   
      
   In article ,   
   Reza  wrote:   
   >1- Is it possible to have a satellite orbit parallel to the equatorial   
   >plane?  Something like a GEO orbit but shifted up or down to cover   
   >other locations of the earth futher up from the equator...   
      
   The plane of any natural orbit must pass through the center of the Earth.   
   So no, not possible... unless you apply continuous thrust.  Doing that   
   with solar sails has in fact been suggested, but solar sails have such low   
   thrust that it's possible only at inordinately high altitudes, much higher   
   than GSO.   
      
   >2- Is there an software package for Windows to design satellite   
   >orbits?   
      
   The industry standard for a lot of this stuff is Satellite Toolkit, aka   
   STK, from Analytical Graphics Inc.  It runs under Windows, and the base   
   system is free (!).  Whether you can explore these particular ideas with   
   the base system, or would need some of the add-on modules -- they are   
   *NOT* free, not even close -- I'm not sure offhand.   
      
   (STK used to be for sale at a fairly hefty price, but then AGI tried   
   something rather daring:  they started handing out free CDROMs of the base   
   system -- lots of them, including bundling one in with Space News a couple   
   of times -- in hopes that it would expand their user community enough that   
   more purchases of add-ons would make up the lost revenue.  Apparently it's   
   been spectacularly successful.)   
   --   
   "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."    |   Henry Spencer   
                                   -- George Herbert       | henry@spsystems.net   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)