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Lesson Objectives
Flight Log Heading To determine the heading that you must maintain during launch requires that you know you latitude that your launching from, the ground track across the planets surface, and the desired inclination that you want to achieve once in orbit. These three values will determine your heading. (Figure 1) Suppose we want to make a horizontal take off in the Delta glider from runway 33 at Cape Canaveral to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS). What heading do we need to fly in order to match the orbital plane of the ISS? To do this we need three pieces of information our current latitude, ground track of ISS, and our desired inclination that we want to achieve. We can then use our performance chart to determine our initial heading that we will have to fly to match the orbit inclination of the ISS .
First look up the latitude in the Main Menu, Object Info, of the Delta Glider (Figure 2). Next determine what orbital inclination that you would like to achieve, this could be a target vessel, ship, or planet. In this case the ISS which has an orbital inclination of 74.47 degrees. The inclination can be found in the Orbital Mode on the MFD. Next determine your current Latitude under the Menu Options, Object Information. From Figure 2 you can see that the Delta Glider is located at 28.59 North Latitude. Use the chart provide in Figure 3 to determine your heading. Find your inclination along the bottom of the chart move up to until the line intersects your current Latitude, this intersection will give you a Beta Angle, of 17.24 degrees, this angle can be used to determine your heading. The Beta Angle needs to be corrected depending on the ground track of space station. Doing so will give us a magnetic heading that we can fly. Comparing Figures 4 and 5 together we can see that the ground track of the ISS is to the South East (Region II), by using Table 1, we can make corrections to our Beta Angle to find our Magnetic Heading of 162.76 degrees (162.76=180-17.24). By flying this heading we will be able to match your orbital inclination to the orbital inclination of the International Space Station Figure 6.
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