07-08-2012, 01:25 PM
ON DIFFERENT SATELLITES FOR LAND SURFACE INFORMATION AND TECHNIQUES BEHIND THOSE
FINAL REPORT.docx (Size: 1.29 MB / Downloads: 38)
SATTELITES
A satellite is an object that goes around, or orbits, a larger object, such asa planet. While there are natural satellites, like the moon, hundreds of manmade satellites also orbit the earth.
There are two types of satellites:
NATURAL SATELLITES
Natural satellites are solid bodies revolving in orbit around a planet of greater mass, such as moon around the earth
ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES
Artificial satellites are craft built by man, launched into space and placed in orbit around the Earth or another planet. They are designed for observing the Earth, telecommunications or scientific research.
Some of the functions artificial satellites serving are as follows:
COMMUNICATION
NAVIGATION
WEATHER FORECASTING
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING
COMMUNICATION SATTELITES
Communication satellites have a quiet, yet profound. Effect on our daily lives. They link remote areas of Earth with telephone and television. Modern financial business is conducted at high speed via satellites. Newspapers such as USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are typeset and then transmitted to printing plants around the country via satellite. Today communication satellites are proved to be very helpful for the remote areas as the latest news and market updates were impossible to reach to these types of areas.
NAVIGATION SATELLITES:
Satellites for navigation were developed in the late 1950s as a direct result of surface ships and submarines needing to know exactly where they were at any given time. In the middle of the ocean out of sight of land, one cant determine an accurate position by looking out the window.
The idea of using satellites for navigation began with the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957.
The three dimensional satellite navigation system (NAVASTAR) enables a traveler to obtain his or her position anywhere on or above the planet.
WEATHER SATTELITES:
Weather satellites have been our eyes in the sky for more than 30 years, since the April, 1960 launch of Tiros I. Today, satellite images showing the advance of weather fronts are regular elements of the evening news. This meteorological information is also available to anyone with a personal computer. A network of American, European, Japanese, and Russian satellites orbits the Earth in various configurations to provide "real-time" monitoring of our environment. Many of these satellites transmit signals directly to ground stations in schools, including the Frank H. Harrison Middle School in Yarmouth, Maine, and Wiscasset Primary School in Wiscasset, Maine. Highly-trained technicians, like Georgie Thompson's second-grade students, operate the controls of such a station. They are able to predict when the satellites will be overhead, when they can expect to receive an image, and they can loop together several images of cloud conditions and movements from different passes of the satellites to make reliable weather predictions. Any school can establish such a ground station at a surprisingly low cost.