Why does the NASA map's of the shuttle's route show such a widely circuitous, roller coaster-like path?

Answer 1

Because that's the way the Shuttle orbits Earth, owing to our gravity fields that are shaped like that. Look at any orbit diagram and it looks like that.

Answer 2

Do you have a "globe" handy?

With a globe and a string, you would very easily see that the so-called "circuitous roller-coaster path" is actually very perfectly a simple circular path around the girth of Earth with the Earth rotating beneath it.

Every time the Shuttle or ISS completes an orbit, the Earth has rotated beneath it so that, on the ground, there is a displacement of approximately 1,500 miles to the east. That happens with each and every 91.2 minute orbit.

In order for the Shuttle to meet and dock with the ISS, the Shuttle has to be "aimed" for an orbital path which coincides with that of the ISS (a window), but is somewhat lower in altitude so that it can close in the vertical projection of the ISS's orbital path. Then, it increases its orbital altitude and quite naturally slows to a near matching speed.

There's still a bit to explain about orbital "mechanics", but given your question, I think i've answered it. I would encourage you to further investigate the topic. I think you'll find it quite interesting. The way things work in orbit is not what it appears on the ground.

Answer 3

The shuttle's orbit is roughly a circle around the Earth but it is quite angled compared to the equator. When you see it drawn on a typical Mercator projection of the Earth it looks kind of like a sine wave. The Earth rotates underneath it so in the 90 minutes between one orbit and the next the ground track of the sine wave has moved over a bit. Maps of the Shuttle or ISS orbit on NASA web sites often show the path for 3 orbits so you see 3 of the sine waves all displaced a bit from one another.

Answer 4

It looks like this because of the distortion brought about by the map itself. If you were to take the map and wrap it around a globe, this would eliminate the distortion at the poles and around the equator, and you would then see that the orbit would be as you think it should, directly around the Earth.

Hope this helps :)

Answer 5

What causes it is the point where they take off. If they had launched from the equator it would around the equator. But it has an advantage to leave it that way. It would take a lot of energy to change the plane of the orbit.