A few smart folks have found that the Earth’s bulge is beneficial to satellites orbiting it. In this article, they explain why a perfectly spherical Earth would’ve been bad for a lot of satellites, resulting in plenty of satellite carnage (satellites falling from orbit more quickly). But it turns out that our spinning, bulgy planet results in a great environment for satellites going around the Earth. For more details about the benefits of the bulge, just go here.
This, in addition to what we learned in this lesson (The “Cutting the Cheese” one) about how the bulge helps with sun-synchronous low earth orbits, we now find out other satellites are benefiting, too.
We knew we loved you, Earth, bulgy middle and all. Don’t change.
The Mad Spaceball 