Week 5: Satellites

This week in class we learned about artificial satellites and their orbits. Most people know the basic idea that the artificial satellites revolve around the earth to provide us with things like Google Earth/Maps, GPS, and weather forecasts.  That is all the information I knew about satellites until this past week too. After reading some articles about satellites and their orbits I became very interested in the mechanics and uses of satellites because I realized how relevant and important they are to our daily lives here on Earth.  Therefore I researched three different satellites that have been launched since 2005; SMAP, MUOS 3, and the CZ-4B.

SMAP - Soil Moisture Active Passive, built by Jet Propulsion Labratory was launched by NASA with a Delta 2 rocket on January 31st, 2015.  This satellite has a 176 x 701 km x 98.1 deg parking orbit. Its orbit is near polar, sun synchronous, and travels from pole to pole in 98.5 min.  It has many purposes but the primary purpose is to measure the top 5cm of the earth's soil moisture and freeze/thaw states.  In addition, it will advance the accuracy behind short term weather forecasts, measure net carbon flux in boreal landscapes, drought monitoring, flood forecasting. The data collected from this satellite can address the problems in many other fields of study as well.
I am interested in hearing what the analysis on the threat of global warming comes back to be after the data has been collected.

Below are some pictures and videos related to SMAP.



Below is a link to see the SMAP spacecraft seperation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLY-w5wgPvw

MUOS 3 - Mobile User Objective System 3 was successfully launched January 20th, 2015 by United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket. This satellite's primary purpose is to improve ground communications of U.S forces around the world. This will allow better communication capability including simultaneous voice, video, and data using 3G technology.  I think this is much needed because communication is essential for military safety and the availability of communication in the middle-east and in foreign waters where most of our military forces are sent is very poor.

Below is a picture of the MUOS 3 launch.



YaoGan-5 a remote sensing satellite was launched by China via the Chang Zheng-4B in December 2008. From the information available, it is said that this satellite will be used for scientific research, land resources surveying, crop yield estimate and disaster prevention and relief. However, since little information has been released about this satellite and the fact that is a remote sensing and disaster relief satellite causes for skepticism about it's possible uses for military purposes.

Below is the picture of YaoGan-5 CZ-4B launch.



http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2008/12/china-orbits-yaogan-5-via-chang-zheng-4b/
http://www.ulalaunch.com/ula-successfully-launches-navys-muos3.aspx?title=United+Launch+Alliance+Successfully+Launches+the+U.S.+Navy%E2%80%99s+Mobile+User+Objective+System-3
https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/events/2015/january/launch-atlas5-muos3.aspx
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87781
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4471