Patent ID: 7270299

Claim:
A constellation of satellites having a common ground track for providing change detection, comprising: at least a first and a second satellite configured in at least two adjacent orbital planes; said first satellite given a predetermined right ascension of ascending node (RAAN 1 ), phasing (F 1 ) and inclination (i), a RAAN 2 and a phasing F 2 for the at least second satellite being determined in radians by satisfying the expressions RAAN 2 =mod(RAAN 1 +RAAN 0 , 2π) and 2πF 2 =mod(2πF 1 −2πk RAAN 0 , 2π), respectively, said k representing the number of times the satellites will orbit the earth in a specified period and said RAAN 0 representing the longitude difference between the at least two different orbital planes, wherein a common ground track for said at least first and second satellites is obtained.