What Can Satellites Do

Why can t noaa s satellites see someone s house.

What can satellites do.

Imaging satellites can measure the changing sizes of glaciers which is difficult to do from the ground due to the remoteness and darkness of the polar regions. Two things can happen to old satellites. Data acquired by satellite borne radars were able to show sea levels have been rising by three mm a year over the last decade. For example there are currently satellites orbiting the moon the sun and several other planets including mercury venus mars and saturn.

The soviet union launched the first artificial satellite sputnik 1 on october 4 1957. Further satellites are instead sent even farther away from earth. A satellite is a moon planet or machine that orbits a planet or star. On 4 october 1957 the soviet union launched the world s first artificial satellite sputnik 1 since then about 8 900 satellites from more than 40 countries have been launched.

Like every other machine satellites do not last. Artificial satellites can be sent to orbit other planets too. In the context of spaceflight a satellite is an object that has been intentionally placed into orbit these objects are called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as earth s moon. Because instead of close up high resolution images our polar orbiting satellites provide much more frequent coverage twice daily over the whole planet in order to understand global weather patterns.