What Can Satellites Do

Data acquired by satellite borne radars were able to show sea levels have been rising by three mm a year over the last decade.

What can satellites do.

Satellites monitor ocean temperatures and prevailing currents. 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. 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. Why can t noaa s satellites see someone s house.

The soviet union launched the first artificial satellite sputnik 1 on october 4 1957. Satellites differ greatly in the level of detail they can see. 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. Further satellites are instead sent even farther away from earth.

Artificial satellites can be sent to orbit other planets too. For the closer satellites engineers will use its last bit of fuel to slow it down so it will fall out of orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. Like every other machine satellites do not last. Two things can happen to old satellites.