Beta angle result of the beta angle of the space station at those times. When the orbiter was in-flight (not docked to ISS) and it flew to a beta angle greater than 60 degrees, the orbiter went into "rotisserie" mode, and slowly rotated around its X-axis (nose to tail axis). For flights to ISS, the shuttle could launch during an ISS beta cutout if the ISS would be at a beta less than 60 degrees at dock, and throughout the docked phase. Therefore, the mission duration affected launch timing when the beta cutout dates were approaching. Beta angle The beta angle (formula_1)
Degrees of freedom See: Degrees of freedom In many scientific fields, the degrees of freedom of a system is the number of parameters of the system that may vary independently. For example, a point in the plane has two degrees of freedom for translation: its two coordinates; a non-infinitesimal object on the plane might have additional degrees of freedoms related to its orientation. In mathematics, this notion is formalized as the dimension of a manifold or an algebraic variety. When "degrees of freedom" is used instead of "dimension", this usually means that the manifold or variety that models the system is only implicitly