Reference 7- Satellites: Visible, Infrared, and Water Vapor

In this lab, we will discuss satellites - what they are, what kinds of satellites exist, and products we can recieve from them. A large portion of this lab exercise will involve you going on the Internet to read about satellites for yourselves.

What are satellites?

A satellite is any object that orbits around another object. The moon is a satellite of the Earth, because the moon circles ( "orbits" ) around the Earth. The Earth itself is also a satellite of the Sun by the same means.

  Satellites, as we know them today, are floating instrument packages designed to complete a task (ie. take pictures, relay a signal, etc.) from space and send the information back to Earth. Since they resided in space, they could cover a larger surface area. They where first introduced during the beginnings of space rockets over 40 years ago, but the concept was concieved many years before that. There are over 8000 satellites currently orbiting the Earth, most not much bigger than a softball, but some the size of a small car.

There are four main types of satellites:

The main type of satellite we will focus on are the geosynchronous orbiting satellites, because they always reside in the same location above the Earth. This makes them very useful for collecting weather information.

The following site from Lockheed-Martin give a good overview of the types of satellites that exist as well as how they are used today. Please look over this entire site, because you can find the answers to some of your homework questions as well as next week's quiz answers.

Meteorological Uses

Second to communications, meteorological data is probably one of the most important uses of satellites. Here we will look at current products issued by satellites.

Learning about meteorological satellites and their images:
Current Meteorological Satellite Data:

New Meteorological Uses

New meteorological uses for satellite data are being developed at an amazing rate. Here we will look at some of the latest developments used over the United States and Atlantic Ocean.