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Disadvantages Of Satellites

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SATELLITE SYSTEMS World’s first satellite “Sputnik” - successfully launched by USSR 1957. Number of satellites has significantly increased to over 1,100 operational satellites, with over 2000 obsolete satellites since the first launch. Satellites either orbit the earth as a geostationary or non-geostationary. Geostationary - stationary in the sky above a fixed point on the surface. The increasing amount of old satellites and space debris has risen concerns for collisions with current satellites. GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEMS (GPS) Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems are used to determine the exact location of a number of modes of transport (e.g., airplanes, cars, ships, etc). GPS works in 2 parts - Satellites surrounding the Earth transmit signals to the surface. A network of satellites constantly broadcast a time signal, including it’s position and time; each satellite has an Atomic clock (used in the satellites which are accurate clocks within a fraction of a second per day) which broadcasts the time signal at the speed of light (about 299 792 458 m / s). The receiver then receives the signal, it can usually receive signals from 6 to 8 of them, and compares the time it took each signal to travel from the satellite to the receiver. By doing so, it is able to triangulate and determine it’s position on earth, quite accurately (within 5 and 50 metres). The computer on board the mode of transport calculates its exact position based on the information from at least

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