Why Do We Need Satellites In Space

The soviet union was the first to launch a satellite into space.

Why do we need satellites in space. Satellite looks like a very high tv mast which located 36 000 km up into space. The weather satellite pictures gif 60k we see on the news come from these satellites. The satellite was launched in 1957 and was called sputnik 1. This orbit makes the satellite travel at the same rate as the earth s spin.

The first satellite picture of earth came from nasa s explorer 6 in 1959. You can see a lot more of the earth at once including remote areas without ground antennas like the oceans and polar areas. You can also reach a. So on first glance it can be hard to see why we need both.

Imaging satellites can measure the changing sizes of glaciers which is difficult to do from the ground due to the remoteness and darkness of the polar regions. Satellites are launched into the space to do a specific job there are satellites that are launched to monitor the cloud patterns for the weather station there are satellites that launched to send television signals for sky tv and every satellite has to be designed specifically to fulfill its function. The first was explorer 1 in 1958. But musk s pet project will need more devices orbiting to see this plan become a full fledged internet provider.

The satellite isn t motionless though. There are many satellites currently in geosynchronous orbits. If it s communications being in space is like being on a very tall tower. It s in a very high orbit and circles the earth once a day.

Data acquired by satellite borne radars were able to show sea levels have been rising by three mm a year over the last decade. And that s not all gps and glonass are being joined by two additional global constellations europe s galileo and china s beidou which together will more the double the number of navigation satellites in orbit around earth. It depends on its purpose. Explorer was america s first man made satellite.

Spacex has said 1 584 satellites will be needed for the starlink system. At the beginning satellites were receiving very weak signal by passive re translators but soon passive re translators were replaced by active re translators transponders.