One of Brazil's top scientists, Eneas Salati, once said, "The best thing you could do for the Amazon rainforest is to blow up all the roads." He wasn't joking. And he had a point.
Environment
Apr 14, 2024
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In an effort to enhance the educational outreach of Starlink constellation, an interactive global map of SpaceX Starlink internet satellites provides live coverage of every satellite in orbit around the Earth.
Space Exploration
Mar 27, 2024
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55
Space weather forecasters have issued a geomagnetic storm watch through Monday, saying an ouburst of plasma from a solar flare could interfere with radio transmissions on Earth. It could also make for great aurora viewing.
Planetary Sciences
Mar 25, 2024
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451
Recent reductions in emissions of tiny particles, the major cause of air pollution globally, have led to more heat in the Earth's climate system. This is shown in a new international study led by CICERO and published in Communications ...
Environment
Apr 8, 2024
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125
It's Saturday, which means that in a universe where the arrow of time moves backward, people have to go to work tomorrow. In such a hypothetical universe, Garfield hates Fridays—tough to imagine. This week, we looked at ...
It's the most fundamental of processes—the evaporation of water from the surfaces of oceans and lakes, the burning off of fog in the morning sun, and the drying of briny ponds that leaves solid salt behind. Evaporation ...
General Physics
Apr 23, 2024
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178
As snow falls on Antarctica, layers build up and turn to ice. Over time, this compressed snow has become a continent-sized glacier, or ice sheet. It's enormous—almost double the size of Australia and far larger than the ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 9, 2024
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666
Sea ice at both the top and bottom of the planet continued its decline in 2024. In the waters around Antarctica, ice coverage shrank to near-historic lows for the third year in a row. The recurring loss hints at a long-term ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 25, 2024
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150
By analyzing the data from ESA's Gaia satellite, Chinese astronomers have detected a new tidal stellar stream in the northern hemisphere, which has a low metallicity and a relatively high energy. The finding was reported ...
Struggle to wrap your head around daylight savings? Spare a thought for the world's timekeepers, who are trying to work out how climate change is affecting Earth's rotation—and in turn, how we keep track of time.
Planetary Sciences
Mar 27, 2024
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109
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
