A Geo-Stationary Satellite (also known as Geo-Synchronous Satellite) is one of the satellite types which positioned straight on top of the equator (earth surface) accurately 22,300 miles out in space. With this particular distance, the satellite must take a full 24 hours to complete a circle together with earth. The tricky practice here is to make sure that the satellite has to move along with earth wherever it goes. In other word, a geo-stationary satellite has to remain in the same mark on earth. The animation picture below might help out to get a better understanding about the movement of geo-stationary satellite.
(image source: www.wikipedia.org)Now we are going to look at the function of geo-stationary satellite. Most of our items or electronic gadget especially used this kind of technology such mobile phone, GPS cordinator & television. So the functions of geo-stationary satellite are:
- Ground Positioning System (GPS)
- Telecommunication
- Weather Forecast
- Television broadcast
- Earth geography observation
- Corel reservation
Some you still might be wondering how exactly a geo-stationary works. Well looking at the image above, radar will send certain amount of data to the satellite and will revert back the data to other location. Because of the topography of earth, it is hard to send the data directly between radars. So this kind of method used to solve the problem. In other case, the data received (let’s say Satellite A) will pass to another satellite (Satellite B) then the Satellite B will send the data to a radar in other location. So if you are in America, you still can connect to China without any time laps. It is like you were there!As you can see, this type of satellite also has its own weakness. Since the satellite only covered for a certain area, lot of satellites must be used to cover all over the world. And in this case every country now is pursuing to develop their own satellite technology and this could cause the outer space filled with satellite. A programme should be launched to reduce the amount of satellite such as technology sharing which means a satellite could cover a few countries for the same purposes.
Some of you may do not noticed that a satellite used solar system to energize-up. But since the satellite movement is exactly the same as earth, it will be facing the night condition which means how to keep a satellite alive during night? That’s why every geo-stationary satellite must be equipped with power reservation so the satellite could stay alive at night and recharge during day time.
You also might want to find out about Sun-Synchronous Satellite.
