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 (statistics) independent pieces of information that go into the estimate of a parameter are called the degrees of freedom. In general, the degrees of freedom of an estimate of a parameter are equal to the number of independent scores that go into the estimate minus the number of parameters used as intermediate steps in the estimation of the parameter itself (most of the time the sample variance has "N" − 1 degrees of freedom, since it is computed from "N" random scores minus the only 1 parameter estimated as intermediate step, which is the sample mean). Mathematically, degrees of freedom is