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[Kalt]

[PUZZLE] #172, Lower Right Purple Hex: Freefall (E3)

[belga]

Here are my 2 cents...
I disagree with you : I think the orbits are those from artificial constellation and individual Artificial satellites

[tanner]

[Mima]

I'm going to start by saying that I know nothing of satellites, but I did find a great site by NASA with a Java Applet that shows the orbits, with a moveable earth so you can try to position to the right place as shown on the card.

I think the purple one might be:

[sixsidedsquare]

Wow! seriously good find there Mima.
That site is exactly what we need to solve this.

The yellow ones deffinatly look like they are what I first expected them to be:

[sixsidedsquare]

And mainly just from their pure numbers, the red and blue ones seem likely to be:

[^J^]

As Kalt pointed out, the first half of the text at the top says:

"There are over 2000 artificial satellites orbiting Earth. Can you name the coloured satellites shown here?"

It does tell you specifically there's 2000 artificial satellites, but the question asks if you can name all of the coloured satellites. It could be a classic misleading question.

Just saying, that's why we didn't focus on artificial satellites.[/i]

[Leeravitz]

I can see that reasoning (ish), but it surely doesn't mean much. After all, plantesimal sized portions of the Solar System cannot be considered to be orbiting the earth, except in the obvious case of the Moon. So, if the emphasis is on satellites, then I'd assume that it was, indeed, artificial satellites we were being asked to consider - and the idea that some are 'constellations' of satellites seems to go even further towards validating that.

Having said that, this does appear to be the point you were making anyway, so I won't waste any more time labouring it !!

Interesting, perhaps, that GPS might (somehow) be coming into the game equation??

And also interesting (re: how Perplexians know about our world) that they are showing knowledge of our broadcast network communications?? Is this partly where they are deriving information about Earth from?? - this would imply they've had something to 'access' before the advent of the Internet in the late 60's, going back a decade or so earlier, I guess...

[^J^]

[sixsidedsquare]

I thought your idea ^J^ was so much cooler , it's just that the positions of the satellites actually seem to correspond to real ones i.e. the ring that has the blue ones and the yellow ones out at that distance.
If you position the java thing (that Mima posted the link to) so it corrisponds with the pic (you have to rotate the card a little) then you find everything lines up. If we could just tell 'when' the image was meant to be it'd be easy to tell which exact satellites each of them are, due to the placing of them in relation to the ones we can be sure of.
(Now, did what I just say make sense...? hmm ....)

[^J^]

I can't take full credit for the answer, Kalt and I worked together on it.

Yeah, it makes sense... it just seems to me like just comparing actual dots to actual satellites seems too easy of a puzzle for a PURPLE card... meh :)

[Kalt]

The time is around 8-10AM PST, 11AM-1PM EST, or 4-6PM GMT (I believe) around the Winter Solstice. The sun is rising about two time zones west of Pacific, and the sun is around 30 degrees south of the equator (At least, a decent angle south, enough to make it deep into Winter). What year, however, is a question I'm not prepared to answer.

Just some info to aid the artificial satellite track of answering this question

[Seej]

Just for clarity, these are definitely not planets. The Earth has only one natural satellite - the moon. The rest of the planets in the solar system are orbiting the Sun, not Earth. What's more, this image appears to be to scale which would mean that even the moon would be waaaaaaay off the side of the card - other planets etc would be need a card the size of a football pitch (very rough estimate) to appear on the picture.

I agree with the suggestion that the equatorial ones are telecomms of some sort, yellow is GPS, the low orbit ones are probably Iridium (interestingly, it should really be called Dysprosium.....) and maybe Teledesic. I'd guess the individual ones probably are telescopes or space stations (is Mir still up? I forget) since their orbits are so low and they're apparently neither equatorial or polar.

Anyway, here are some nice pages from Surrey Uni to help further the spec:
Lloyd's satellite constellations
Big LEO tables
A constellation simulator

[NovacaineX]

Any Mac users out there might want to try this program out. Here's a sample.

[Leeravitz]

Not that I know much about satellites - but maybe it does make sense if each distinct colour is representing something with a distinct function (whether telecommunications, GPS or whatever)...

And, just in case we were forgetting, blue, yellow and red represent a cluster of a number of satellites (which I assume means that they are smaller relative to scale) and green and purple are individual devices (so, presumably bigger - maybe a space station, telescope or orbital platform *is* the right sort of thing to be looking for here, and we shouldn't get too hung up on taking 'satellite' in a literal sense...)