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Artificial Satellites
Artificial Satellites are objects launched from earth to orbit earth or other planets. Satellites are used for communication, remote sensing, weather forecasting, and other purposes. This category is for questions about satellites in general or specific satellites.
1,932 Questions
Is the moon a natural or artificial satellite?
Natural Satellites
•They formed naturally
•We perceive information from them
•We have no control over them
•Naturally orbit a planet
•Cannot be used as a weapon
•Influences nature eg waves etc
•Has no life expectancy
Man made satellites
•Humans made them and put them there
•They feed information directly to us
•We control the satellites and can choose the type of information given to us from them
•Go anywhere we choose to send them
•Can be intentionally used as a weapon by humans
•Sends transmissions to Earth
•Has a limited and known life expectancy
Explain what is necessary for satellites to stay in orbit?
No. An object stays in orbit simply by a balance of its existing speed tangent to its direction of fall and a constant rate of falling toward whatever it orbits.
Because space, particularly near the Earth, is not a perfect vacuum, there is a certain amount of friction and the orbit of satellites in low orbits does decay over time. For this reason, some satellites do have rocket motors to periodically boost their orbit back up to where it's supposed to be.
The Hubble Space Telescope will soon need to be either "re-orbited" (pushed into a higher orbit) or "de-orbited" (pushed into a controlled reentry) because of this. The alternative is to do nothing, in which case it will eventually re-enter on its own, but that's dangerous since it's much harder to predict where it will come down in that case and pieces might very well hit a populated area. With small satellites this is less of a problem, but the Hubble is fairly large and it's likely that some parts of it may survive re-entry and impact the ground instead of burning up entirely in the atmosphere as a meteor. In the past we've used the Space Shuttles to do this, and the Hubble was in fact designed to be returned to Earth aboard a shuttle eventually, but with the retirement of the shuttle fleet this is no longer an option. It will probably be deorbited sometime around 2025, unless replacements for the shuttle are available before then to re-orbit it and it seems worthwhile to do so.
What is an important information-gathering satellite now in orbit around earth called?
There are a great number of satellites currently orbiting the Earth, and they are ALL important; at least, important enough to SOMEBODY to spend millions of dollars to launch each one.
Depending on your interests, the "most important" satellites are probably the weather forecasting satellites, followed by the communications and GPS satellites.
What was the name of the satellite that explored the sun?
it is impossible to go on the sun. it is far to hot.
Who were the first people to use the GPS Receiver?
The U.S. military was the first to develop and use GPS technology in the 1970s for navigation and positioning purposes. It was later made available for civilian use in the 1980s.
What devices need satellites in geostationary orbits?
Devices such as telecommunications satellites, weather satellites, and broadcasting satellites rely on geostationary orbits to provide continuous coverage over a specific region on Earth. This allows for consistent and reliable communication, weather monitoring, and broadcasting services.
What causes a satellite to slow down?
Ideally, once in orbit, a satellite remains the same altitude and angular velocity forever. There are two common ways in which a satellite can slow down.
Atmospheric Drag
Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites - below 2,000 Km (1,200 mile) altitude - suffer orbital decay due to atmospheric drag, especially below 500 Km altitude. While extremely thin, the atmosphere is still present at such altitudes, and as a result, such low earth orbit satellites lose some of their orbital kinetic energy (speed) to friction with the thin atmosphere, called drag.
The International Space Station (ISS), for example, is a LEO satellite, orbiting the earth at an altitude of approximately 330 Km (210 miles). At this altitude, the ISS encounters a tiny amount of atmospheric drag, and as a result, it slows down infinitesimally in each orbit. The tiny orbital decay accumulates orbit after orbit, and after a long while, the ISS will have slowed down noticeably. Kepler's law of orbital dynamics tell us that, as an orbiting object slows down, it cannot sustain its existing orbit, and without an external force to push the object into a higher orbit, the object will also lose altitude. So not only does the ISS slow down, but it ever so gradually descends toward earth as well. As it loses altitude, the ISS encounters slightly thicker atmosphere, creating an even stronger drag, causing the ISS to slow down even faster, and lose altitude more quickly, and thus a vicious cycle begins.
The visiting space shuttles periodically use their rocket thrusters to boost the ISS back up to its optimal orbit and speed. Without these regular repositioning missions, the ISS is doomed to a fiery re-entry and plummet to the earth's surface.
Tidal Dynamics
Tidal Dynamics occur when a secondary body orbits a primary body, and the primary body has oceans that give rise to tides due to the secondary body's gravitational pull.
Consider the Earth (primary body) and the moon (secondary body). The moon orbits the Earth, and as it does, it causes tides to bulge in the Earth's oceans. The angular gravitational torque between the moon and this tidal bulge acts as an external force upon the moon, thus causing the moon to ascend in its orbit, and in accordance with Kepler's law, the velocity of the moon decreases at the higher orbit.
Therefore the moon is imperceptibly slowing down every year due to tidal forces. At the same time, tidal friction here on Earth is causing our planet to reduce the speed of its rotation ever so slightly. These changes in the moon's orbit and Earth's rotation are so infinitesimally small that they almost go unnoticed - almost. The slowing of the Earth's orbit due to tidal friction does give rise to the odd leap second from time to time.
In theory, this phenomenon will continue for about 2 billion years until the earth's rotation and moon's orbit were in perfect lock, and the moon would forevermore hover over the exact same point on Earth. This tidal-locked geosynchronous orbit already exists with Pluto and its moon, Charon. In the case of Earth, there is a good chance our sun will have expanded to such a size and intensity that that the oceans, and all living things on Earth, will have been vaporized long before the moon locks over a single position above Earth.
It's possible because the orbital period only depends on the satellite's distance from the center of the Earth, not its height above the Earth's surface. As long as the two satellites have the same distance from the center of the Earth, they will have the same orbital period even if their heights above the Earth's surface are different.
What was the first satellite to reach a retrograde orbit?
The first satellite to reach a retrograde orbit was Explorer 8, launched by the United States in 1960. It was the first satellite to intentionally be placed in a polar orbit, which is a type of retrograde orbit.
Where can you find a list of satellites launched by russia?
You can find a list of satellites launched by Russia on websites such as n2yo.com or celestrak.com. These websites provide real-time tracking information for satellites in orbit, including those launched by Russia.
How far from the earth is the largest earth orbiting man made satellite?
One obvious one...it's the moon! There are however, several other large objects orbiting the earth and a 6th apart from the moon and the other four has been recently discovered. Capture by gravity by the earth of a new satellite is almost impossible. There would have to be specific forces (usually friction from dust, or perhaps the moons gravitational pull) that would allow for a new object to begin orbiting the Earth.
New smaller objects may appear and disappear, but the Moon will be Earth's only long term companion for quite some time. Eventually, however, it too will be lost. Currently, Luna is moving away from the earth at a rate of about two inches per year.
Please see the link below for more information
Why are polar satellites called Detective satellite?
A satellite in a polar orbit orbits from north to south. As the earth turns, it passes over all the surface area of the earth. Therefore, polar orbits are ideal for detecting things on the planet's surface.
What are the 2 orbits of satellites?
Artificial and natural satellites.
Artificial satellites are man-made satellites sent into space for a variety of different purposes e.g. taking pictures of the earth for scientific investigation
Natural satellites are moons, which orbit planets and are not man-made.
Why moon natural satellite of earth is not used communication satellite?
The Moon is, sometimes, used as a natural reflector for radio signals. The problem is that the surface of the Moon is so rough and uneven that most of the signal scatters back into space instead of bouncing back to Earth.
Another reason is that the Moon can only reflect signals. Modern communications satellites actively rebroadcast the signal back to Earth.
And finally, the Moon is only available for half of the day, and it keeps moving. Modern satellites in geosynchronous orbit appear to hang motionless in the sky, so your Earth-based antenna doesn't have to move to track it. To use the Moon as a reflector, you would need motors and tracking mechanisms to slew the dish to point at the Moon. The cost of the tracking mechanisms would certainly be over $100 each. $100 per dish times how many satellite dishes are there? and pretty soon putting a satellite in geosynch looks like the lower-cost option.
How do they know what the weather is going to be like?
Off the cuff, I'd say by using their fancy pants instruments. Barometers measure atmospheric pressure; gauging relative pressures can indicate whether a high pressure system is moving towards or away from you; same general principle can be gauged using thermometers, ie. high vs. low temperature systems. Satellite systems give a pretty good indication of atmospheric moisture content, ie. where massive clouds are forming vs. where they may go; also they can indicate wind patterns via cloud 'flow.' Last, ocean currents are fairly reliable indicators of the seasons - hot water from the tropics flowing north (and south) from the tropics into regions where cold water is flowing south (and north) from the equators; fairly regular patterns have been established.
How do geosynchronized satellites work?
An awesome question. Satellites that are stationary, compared to our planet, are moving at at exactly the same speed as our planet's rotation. To do this, a satellite must be exactly a certain distance away from our planet so it "falls" at just the right speed as to never change it's apparent position. That distance is 35,786 kilometers (give or take a few meters).
Which satellite went out of your solar system?
No satellite has left our solar system. The farthest human-made object from Earth is the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has entered interstellar space but is still within the boundary of our solar system.
How many pieces of junk are orbiting Earth now?
It is estimated that there are over 9,000 tons of space debris currently in orbit around Earth, consisting of discarded rockets, defunct satellites, and fragments from collisions. These objects pose a risk to operational satellites and spacecraft in orbit. Multiple organizations are working on developing solutions to mitigate the issue of space debris.
The period of a satellite is defined as..?
The period of a satellite is the time it takes for the satellite to complete one orbit around its parent body, such as a planet or a star. It is typically measured in hours, days, or years depending on the size and speed of the satellite's orbit. The period is determined by the satellite's orbital velocity and the mass of the parent body it is orbiting.
When did Edwin Hubble invent the telescope?
Edwin Hubble was an astronomer who worked with Earth-based telescopes, and who died in 1953, before the launch of the first artificial satellite. The Hubble Space Telescope was named in his honor almost 40 years later.
Additional:
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If anything can be said to be invented by Hubble, it is to be found in a few ideas that came out of a few discoveries he made such as the existence of the Universe.
Only at the turn of the century with the construction of gigantic telescopes of almost a meter in diameter was it possible to distinguish the blobs known as nebulae as being outside of our galaxy. In the 1920s Hubble's observations confirmed the existence of other galaxies in the universe outside of our own galaxy, an idea that existed, but was controversial and lacked evidence earlier. (Earlier, the universe was thought to be infinite, but mostly empty except for our own little neighborhood of a few billion stars in the Milky Way. As always, we were the center of the Universe.)
In the next years, Hubble expanded this with data from others to quantify the observation that the Universe was expanding. (Now called Hubble's Law.) This led, of course, to the first data supporting the Big Bang theory suggested in by Georges Lemaître in 1927.
What discoveries were made because of satellites?
Satellites have enabled various discoveries, such as mapping Earth's surface, monitoring weather patterns, tracking climate change, studying the atmosphere and oceans, observing wildlife migrations, and aiding in disaster response and management. They have also revolutionized communication, navigation, and scientific research.
What are earth's artificial sateillites?
Artificial satellites orbiting Earth are man-made objects launched into space for various purposes such as communication, weather monitoring, navigation, and scientific research. They can be either in geostationary or low Earth orbit, and examples include the Hubble Space Telescope, GPS satellites, and communications satellites.
How often do satellites take pictures?
Satellites can take pictures as frequently as every few minutes to once every few days, depending on the satellite's orbit, purpose, and imaging capabilities. Some satellites may be tasked to capture images at specific intervals while others may have more flexible scheduling.
What is one difference between satellites and electrons?
One difference is that satellites are man-made objects launched into space for various purposes, such as communication, weather forecasting, and navigation. Electrons, on the other hand, are fundamental particles that make up atoms and carry a negative electric charge.
Why does Halley's comet travel regularly?
76 years is how long Halley's Comet takes to swing round the Sun.
Halley's Comet orbits the sun in an elliptical path, meaning it follows an oval-shaped orbit rather than a circular path. The reason why we only see it every 76 years is probably because it follows a very long path. Also, for the majority of its trip, Halley's Comet is nowhere new the sun meaning that we wouldn't be able to see it anyway.
Did you know that the last time Halley's Comet was seen was october 1996
For more information check out what NASA has to say in the related links below:
