SpaceX tallies 1st of two launches over two days from Space Coast
SpaceX launched Wednesday evening the first of a pair of Space Coast rockets in two days, both carrying batches of the company's Starlink satellites.
SpaceX launched Wednesday evening the first of a pair of Space Coast rockets in two days, both carrying batches of the company's Starlink satellites.
Space Exploration
8 hours ago
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Land subsidence is overlooked as a hazard in cities, according to scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Virginia Tech. Writing in the journal Science, Prof Robert Nicholls of the Tyndall Center for Climate ...
Earth Sciences
2 hours ago
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An international team of researchers, led by Professor Jin Wu from the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has made a promising advancement in mapping plant functional traits from space using ...
Earth Sciences
1 hour ago
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In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon.
The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. By 2009 thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit around the Earth. These originate from more than 50 countries and have used the satellite launching capabilities of ten nations. A few hundred satellites are currently operational, whereas thousands of unused satellites and satellite fragments orbit the Earth as space debris. A few space probes have been placed into orbit around other bodies and become artificial satellites to the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Satellites are used for a large number of purposes. Common types include military (spy) and civilian Earth observation satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, and research satellites. Space stations and human spacecraft in orbit are also satellites. Satellite orbits vary greatly, depending on the purpose of the satellite, and are classified in a number of ways. Well-known (overlapping) classes include low Earth orbit, polar orbit, and geostationary orbit.
Satellites are usually semi-independent computer controlled systems. Satellite subsystems attend many tasks, such as power generation, thermal control, telemetry, attitude control and orbit control.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA