orbital inclination
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AI overview
Orbital inclination is the angle between a reference plane (like Earth's equator or the plane of the solar system) and the actual path an object takes as it orbits. It matters because it determines things like which parts of Earth a satellite can observe, how much fuel is needed to reach an orbit, and whether objects in space might collide with each other.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
Fig. 1: Orbital inclination represented by i (dark green), along with other fundamental orbital parameters
Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object.