TOPIC: NANO -SATELLITE
introduction:
What is a satellite?
Satellite is a celestial body orbiting around larger body like planet or star. It can be artificial or natural.
A natural satellite, is a celestial body that orbits another body, e.g. a planet, which is called its primary. There are 164 known natural satellites orbiting planets in the Solar System, as well as at least eight orbiting IAU-listed dwarf planets. Earth has one large natural satellite, known as the Moon; and Mars has two tiny natural satellites, Phobos and Deimos. Mercury and Venus have no natural satellite. Saturn has an additional six mid-sized natural satellites massive enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium, and Uranus has five.
Artificial satellite is a man-made device orbiting around the earth, moon, or another planet transmitting to earth scientific information or used for communication, navigation etc.
The first artificial satellite was Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, and initiating the Soviet Sputnik program, with Sergei Korolev as chief designer. Sputnik 1 helped to identify the density of high atmospheric layers through measurement of its orbital change and provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere.
Satellites can be classified by their functions. Satellites are launched into space to do a specific job. The type of satellite that is launched to monitor cloud patterns for a weather station will be different than a satellite launched to send television signals across Canada. The satellite must be designed specifically to fulfill its function. Below are the names of nine different types of satellites-
1. Astronomy satellites - Hubble Space Telescope
2. Atmospheric Studies satellites - Polar
3. Communications satellites - Anik E
4. Navigation satellites - Navstar
References: 1. http://nasasearch.nasa.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=nasa&query=nanosatellite 2. http://spectrum.ieee.org/ 3. http://www.spacecraftaustralia.com/ 4. http://www.nanosat.jp/ 5. http://www.sstl.co.uk/Missions/STRaND-1--Launched-2013 6. http://tyvak.com/ 7. http://www.leodium.ulg.ac.be/cmsms/ 8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniaturized_satellite