It's not reliant on terrestrial cell towers, instead connecting to Iridium's network of 66 low-orbiting satellites.
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Although they are complicated and expensive, Iridium's low-earth orbiting satellites have worked pretty much as billed.
There are models to follow: My fellow ham radio operators have been orbiting satellites since December, 1961.
It has a strong space science effort under way, with two orbiting satellites having already been launched to the Moon.
Perry Nouis, spokesperson for the U.S. Space Command, which monitors orbiting satellites.
Both the U.S. and Soviet Union tested anti-satellite technology in the 1980's, and the U.S. even shot down one of its orbiting satellites in 1985.
Kearns and a team of scientists led by Alan Strong of NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service analyzed sea surface temperature data from the agency's polar-orbiting satellites from 1984 through 1996.
Teledesic is a global network that aims in late 2002 to provide Internet access, video conferencing and computer network connections through 288 low- orbiting satellites to its customers no matter where in the world they are.
They understand that just as we invest in maintaining our critical human-built infrastructure, whether roads, bridges, power plants, or orbiting satellites, so too must we be vigilant in safeguarding natural infrastructure to avoid crippling costs down the road.
It would make more sense for the rover to hand the whole file over to a lander, which could pass it in chunks to orbiting relay satellites for transmission home.
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Signals received from satellites orbiting 22, 000km (13, 670miles) above the earth are then used to calculate a more accurate measurement.
When the belts expand, they can pose dangers to satellites orbiting Earth, and even the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, which orbits about 240 miles high (390 km).
First, GPS units have to pick up extremely faint radio signals from satellites orbiting 12, 000 miles in the sky, and that requires receivers that pull in as broad a swath of spectrum as possible.
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Big geostationary satellites, orbiting 26, 000 miles above the sky, are a lousy two-way synchronous Internet medium.
It is one of at least four Israeli spy satellites currently orbiting the Earth.
With over 1100 active satellites currently operating in the near-Earth environment (many of them worth hundreds of millions of dollars), and an additional 2500 inactive satellites still orbiting around our planet, the savings could be substantial.
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Scientists also found that climate change is actually affecting satellites that are orbiting the planet, and a separate study warned that climate change could wipe out coffee production by 2080.
Eventually the company is hoping to use its research to create orbiting systems that can fling other satellites into deep space, but seeing how the last Dnepr rocket crashed and burned on liftoff in 2006, Team Tether is probably best off taking this endeavor one step at a time.
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The need to acquire as much information as possible before acting in a crisis situation also explains why the United States is currently orbiting a new generation of space-based infrared satellites that can detect missile launches and nuclear detonations within seconds after they occur.
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The data are sent from the orbiting outpost to NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, which relay it to the satellite reception dishes at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.
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It has two old satellites in orbit that are likely to become targets for a future de-orbiting exercise.
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