Posted on 03/07/2014 1:33:33 PM PST by bgill
Cell phones and in-dash navigation systems rely on GPS satellites, Dish and DirecTV obviously use satellite feeds, and satellite communications systems offered by the likes of Inmarsat and Iridium continue to proliferate across various industries. Just how crowded is it getting up there above the Earth’s atmosphere?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The bottom image shows asymmetry with satellites almost forming a “bowl”. I think that this may prove that North is “down”! :)
Wow
That was the last one. A French spy satellite lost contact, and they asked the Brits about it. The British equivalent of NORAD looked back over its records and found an occurrence of intersecting orbits.
It was determined that a dead satellite (also French, iirc) clipped the bottom of the spy bird, shearing part off, and sending it tumbling.
When you think about space being big, you have to remember that there are desirable orbits, and they do get crowded. Also, gravity sucks, and those objects get pulled down into much narrower "corridors", increasing the chances of collision.
Since global warming isn't happening, the atmosphere isn't expanding often to create drag on all the defunct objects and junk, to help to clean up some of the stuff.
I saw that on WALL-E
They recorded the whole aftermath in Gravity.
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Indeed it is. What this tells us is that if we had good enough telescopes we could tell if the aliens have DirecTV. ;)
Then they've had DirecTV on Saturn since before Galileo's time, right?
Nasa has a web app that shows this in real time. It’s pretty cool. I believe this particular image is why I’m no longer being abducted by aliens. It’s just too darn dangerous for them. :-)
Then they’ve had DirecTV on Saturn since before Galileo’s time, right?
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Actually, that hadn’t occurred to me. Those guys at DirecTV were really ahead of their time.
Lots of stuff up there - the gross size relationship to make them visible on that size diagram makes it look a whole lot more crowded than it is.
Hard to believe you have not been pinged to this!
Which one is Sandra Bullock?
Yeah, really, what’s up with that? ;’) Thanks houeto, a nice extra for APoD.
In these representations, each satellite looks to be about the size of Mexico.
I can’t find the X-37B. Does it have a cloaking device?
And none of these satellites could detect a Boeing 777 going down?
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