Top 10 satellites orbiting around the world
Today, a satellite was involved in your life. Whether you checked a weather report, watched SportsCenter or looked for your mom’s house on Google Maps, you did something that would have been impossible without an automated spacecraft orbiting hundreds of miles above your head. But how many of these satellites do you know by name? Here are the top ten you need to know, because they make modern life possible.
Hubble space technologies
Launched: 1990
Opening our eyes to the wonders of our ‘planetary’, Hubble brought the beauty and mystery of space by the photos. It has rich modern astronomy by being an efficient tool for new discoveries. Objective to visible the universe and to look the entire space with cameras.
HST is one of the greatest scientific projects having 2.4 m-diameter space telescope optimised to observe from the ultraviolet to the infrared, collaborated between ESA and NASA. Hubble was deployed by the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31) into a circular orbit 575 km above the ground, inclined at 28.5° to the equator. The time taken for one orbit is between 96 and 97 minutes. Hubble have received some new science instruments on1997. Hubble has resumed its scientific observations, with expanded science capabilities and an extended life.
GPS IIR-1
Launched: 1997
Without this there won’t be the Geocaching! The U.S. government’s NAVSTAR program brought global positioning abilities first to the military, then to the general public. It takes a constellation of these things for the system to work the IIR-1 is the one among them. The GPS satellite and payload shroud survived intact until impacting the ground .The GPS satellite took charge, covered and handled perfect until impacting the ground.
The International Space Station (ISS)
Launched: 1998
ISS is a space station, or an artificial satellite suited for maintaining and monitoring the spacecraft’s, in low Earth orbit. The ISS is now the largest artificial body in orbit and can often be seen with the naked eye from Earth. The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields. It completes 15.54 orbits per day.
KH-13
Launched: 1999
OOPS! A hidden information about the satellite. This U.S. spy satellite is so secret, even the name is probably wrong the government started giving them random names after people caught onto to the KH numbering system.
TERRA
Launched: 1999
A Chief of the Terra Earth Observing System EOS which is a multi-national NASA scientific research satellite in a Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth. It was placed into a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705km.
Terra undertaken the five remote sensors designed to monitor to update the state of Earth’s environment and ongoing changes in its climate system.
- ASTER(Advanced Space borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer)
- CERES(Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System)
- MISR(Multi-angle Imaging Spectro Radiometer)
- MODIS(Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectro Radiometer)
- MOPITT(Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere)
Also Data from the satellite helps scientists better to census the spread of pollution around the globe. It gives entirely the updated and new data.
Landsat 7
Launched: 1999
The satellite for refreshing the global archives of satellite photos, providing up-to-date and cloud-free images. Has the capacity to collect and transmit up to 532 images per day a polar sun-synchronous orbit, meaning it scans across the entire earth’s surface. The data collected and distributed, managed and operated by the USGS. Landsat 7 has a solid state memory of 378 gigabits. The main instrument on board Landsat 7 is the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus.
GOES 12
Launched: 2001
An American weather satellite, in April 2010 it is the standby orbit, position providing coverage of the east coast of the United States. GOES 12 was used instead in order to test its Solar X-ray Imager. The Solar X-ray Imager failed in April 2006.
From its high-altitude geosynchronous orbit, GOES-12 keeps a constant look on weather conditions in most of North America.
NOAA-17
Launched: 2002
A Weather forecasting satellite operated by NOAA. The NOAA satellites have asynchronous orbits, 824 km above the Earth, orbiting every 101 minutes. Spinning around the globe to spot developing weather patterns that affect billions of people. Satellite was retired in 2013 It hosted the AMSU, AVHRR and High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HRIS) instruments.
Galaxy 14
Launched: 2005
As one of the geostationary satellites. The Galaxy series is a family of satellites have updating many satellites. This communications relay carries digital TV signals for much of the east coast, including ESPN, Lifetime, Sci-Fi, CNN, A&E and personal favourite, the History Channel.
SES1
Launched: 2010
SES-1 is a geostationary communications satellite designed to replace two ageing spacecraft serving North America which is operated by SES World Skies.
It has a design life of fifteen years, however it was launched with enough fuel to operate for at least sixteen if its systems are still functional.
