Browsing: Satellites

Satellites are objects, either man-made or natural, that orbit larger bodies in space. Natural satellites, like Earth’s Moon, have existed naturally. However, artificial satellites are human-made objects launched into space to serve various functions, including communications, weather monitoring, navigation, scientific research, and Earth observation. Since the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, by the Soviet Union in 1957, thousands of satellites have been launched by governments and private enterprises around the world. These satellites play a crucial role in our daily lives, enabling global communications, television broadcasting, weather forecasting, disaster management, and GPS systems. They orbit at various altitudes and trajectories, from a few hundred kilometers above Earth in low Earth orbit to geostationary orbits 35,786 kilometers above the Equator, where they rotate synchronously with the Earth’s rotation.