It depends on their use. Communications satellites relay signals from a fixed spot on the equator, about 22,000 miles up. GPS satellites are at 12,400 miles, high enough to be accessible to large swaths of the Earth.

It is always directly over the same place on the Earth’s surface. Satellites in geostationary orbit rotate with the Earth directly above the equator, continuously staying above the same spot. This position allows satellites to observe weather and other phenomena that vary on short timescales.

approximately 73 km

Voyager

Vanguard 1

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NOAA satellites have the capability to provide astounding views of the Earth. But many people want to know if these satellites can see their house, or even through their roofs and walls to the people inside. The answer is: no. Satellites differ greatly in the level of detail they can “see”.

There have been no observed collisions between natural satellites of any Solar System planet or moon. Collision candidates for past events are: The objects making up the Rings of Saturn are believed to continually collide and aggregate with each other, leading to debris with limited size constrained to a thin plane.

If they did collide, “there would be thousands of pieces of new debris that would stay in orbit for decades. Those new clouds of debris would threaten any satellites operating near the collision altitude and any spacecraft transiting through on its way to other destinations.

As of 2014, there were about 2,000 commercial and government satellites orbiting the earth. It is estimated that there are 600,000 pieces of space junk ranging from 1 to 10 cm (0.39 to 3.94 in), and on average one satellite is destroyed by collision with space junk each year.

Two satellites hurtling across the sky at nearly 33,000 mph (53,000 km/h) narrowly missed a collision over the US state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday. The two objects “crossed paths without incident,” a spokesman for US Space Command told the AFP news agency.

No one has yet been killed by re-entering space junk. EVERY DAY a tonne or two of defunct satellites, rocket parts and other man-made orbiting junk hurtles into the atmosphere. Four-fifths of it burns up to become harmless dust, but that still leaves a fair number of fragments large enough to be lethal.

Two things can happen to old satellites: 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. Further satellites are instead sent even farther away from Earth. That way, it will fall out of orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

Hubble is best seen from areas of the Earth that are between the latitudes of 28.5 degrees north and 28.5 degrees south. In contrast, the ISS passes over much more of the Earth because its orbit has a higher inclination at 51.6 degrees.

The satellites in the very low end of that range typically only stay up for a few weeks to a few months. They run into that friction and will basically melt, says McDowell. But at altitudes of 600 km—where the International Space Station orbits—satellites can stay up for decades.

Russia is known to have 71 military satellites, and China 63. Other countries, such as France, Germany, Italy, India, the UK, Turkey, Mexico, Columbia, Spain, Denmark, and Japan have less than 10 each. France and Germany have the most, with 9 and 7, respectively.

China’s permanent space station (about the size of Russia’s Mir station) is scheduled to be completed and functioning by end of 2022. The Long March 2F and the Shenzhou spacecraft will transport the crew, while the Long March 7 and the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft will transport supplies and propellant.

Chang’e 3, which includes a lander and rover, was launched on 1 December 2013 and successfully soft-landed on the Moon on 14 December 2013….Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.

Two matters of distrust, including the use of an anti-satellite weapon and the hacking of Jet Propulsion Laboratory intellectual property, purportedly fueled a bill passed in 2011 to ban China from the International Space Station.

It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements.

India is planning to launch its own space station, ISRO chief K Sivan announced Thursday about this ambitious project which will enable the agency to send more humans to space when executed. He also said India will not join the International Space Station (ISS). “We are planning to have a separate space station.

China launched two Tiangong prototype space labs in 2011 and 2016. The Tiangong 1 space lab hosted two Shenzhou crew in 2012 and 2013, and China’s most recent human spaceflight mission — Shenzhou 11 — docked with the Tiangong 2 module in 2016.

SpaceX’s first crewed mission to Mars could be just four years away. Company founder and CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday (Dec. 1) that he’s “highly confident” SpaceX will launch people toward the Red Planet in 2026, adding that the milestone could come as early as 2024 “if we get lucky.”

Space stations have most often been launched for scientific purposes, but military launches have also occurred. China, India, Russia, and the U.S., as well as Bigelow Aerospace and Axiom Space, are all planning other stations for the coming decades.

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