Facts About Satellites

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Visualization_of_the_GPM_Core_Observatory_and_Partner_Satellites

Satellites are basically the things that orbit around a planet, whether it is natural or artificial. They serve various purposes. For example, a natural satellite can be the Moon. The Moon is the only natural satellite for the planet Earth. But there are thousands of other artificial satellites serving various purposes like communication, security—mostly by the military—observation, weather monitoring, etc. In addition to those, these artificial satellites’ imagery has many innovative uses in the environmental, economic, entertainment, and humanitarian sectors.

Fact 1: Sputnik 2 is the first-ever spacecraft to send a living animal to space. It was a Russian spacecraft, which was the second one from them. It was sent out to space in November, 1957. The living creature inside it was a dog named “Laika.”

Fact 2: Since the first satellite was launched in 1957, over 6,500 satellites have been sent into orbit; and 1,071 are still operational satellites in orbit around the Earth. The rest are now classed as “space debris.” Almost fifty percent of them were launched by the USA.

Fact 3: If the satellites have to be grouped as per their functions, there are three main groups. “Fixed satellite” services handle billions of voice, data, and video transmissions. “Mobile satellite” systems are used for navigation (GPS) and to connect remote ships, aircraft, etc. “Scientific research” satellites are used for meteorological data, land survey images, and other scientific research functions.

Fact 4: Since there are too many satellites in the Earth’s orbit now, the chances of a crash have increased. In 2009, two communication satellites—one American and one Russian—collided in space.

Fact 5: The speed of a satellite is 18,000 miles per hour. That means on a given day, satellites can travel the entire circumference of Earth about fourteen times. Unlike the Moon, a natural satellite, the artificial satellites’ movements can be controlled from Earth.

Fact 6: Every day these satellites transmit and send a huge amount of information back to Earth. If all the data that one sends in a year would be saved on DVDs, then the DVDs could form a stack the height of nearly four times the height of the Empire State Building.

Fact 7: Since there is a vacuum in space, the fuel requirement for a satellite to function is much less. It is lower than any of the most fuel-efficient vehicles running on Earth.

Fact 8: DigitalGlobe is an American company that is a vendor for satellite imagery, which is used for defense and intelligence, civil agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, internet portals, and navigation technology. There are three satellites around the world at any given moment ready to take instant pictures of world events.

Fact 9: The first-ever idea of the satellite was mentioned in a fictional short story by Edward Everett Hale. The story was “The Brick Moon,” and it was published in a monthly magazine called The Atlantic Monthly. The serialization started in 1869. However, the practical idea of a satellite was first thought of by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1857-1935. In 1903, he published an academic paper called “Means of Reaction Devices.” In this, he proposed the idea of a multi-stage rocket using liquid hydrogen and oxygen being used to launch the satellite into orbit, as well as calculating the orbital speed required to maintain orbit, 8 km/s.

Fact 10: The satellites flying at altitudes between 160 kilometers and 2,000 kilometers are called low-flying satellites. When these satellites function no more, there is a chance that they will fall back to Earth’s atmosphere because they pass through traces of air in the upper atmosphere that slow them down. High-flying satellites can stay in space forever.

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