Why does satellite orbit the earth

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Gravity is stronger the closer you are to Earth. And satellites that orbit close to Earth must travel at very high speeds to stay in orbit.

It has to travel at 17, miles per hour to stay in orbit. It only has to travel about 6, miles per hour to overcome gravity and stay in orbit. This satellite is only a couple hundred miles from the ground. It all has to do with what each satellite is designed to accomplish. The goal of the GOES-R series is to keep a continual watch on one area of the world—the western hemisphere. By orbiting at the same speed the Earth rotates, it stays over one place. This is called a geosynchronous orbit.

Putting satellites into orbit enables us to use technologies for telecommunication, navigation, weather forecast, and astronomy observations. On each mission, a rocket places one or more satellites onto their individual orbits.

The choice of which launch vehicle is used depends primarily on the mass of the payload, but also on how far from Earth it needs to go. Depending on which orbit Ariane 5 is going to, it is able to launch between approximately 10 to 20 tonnes into space — that is 10 —20 kg, which is about the weight of a city bus. Vega is smaller than Ariane 5, capable of launching roughly 1. Both Ariane 5 and Vega can deploy multiple satellites at a time.

These rockets will be more flexible and will extend what Europe is capable of getting into orbit, and will be able to deliver payloads to several different orbits in a single flight — like a bus with multiple stops. Upon launch, a satellite or spacecraft is most often placed in one of several particular orbits around Earth — or it might be sent on an interplanetary journey, meaning that it does not orbit Earth anymore, but instead orbits the Sun until its arrival at its final destination, like Mars or Jupiter.

There are many factors that decide which orbit would be best for a satellite to use, depending on what the satellite is designed to achieve. GEO is used by satellites that need to stay constantly above one particular place over Earth, such as telecommunication satellites. This way, an antenna on Earth can be fixed to always stay pointed towards that satellite without moving. It can also be used by weather monitoring satellites, because they can continually observe specific areas to see how weather trends emerge there.

Satellites in GEO cover a large range of Earth so as few as three equally-spaced satellites can provide near global coverage. This is because when a satellite is this far from Earth, it can cover large sections at once. This is akin to being able to see more of a map from a metre away compared with if you were a centimetre from it. So to see all of Earth at once from GEO far fewer satellites are needed than at a lower altitude. This means Europe can always stay connected and online. By comparison, most commercial aeroplanes do not fly at altitudes much greater than approximately 14 km, so even the lowest LEO is more than ten times higher than that.

This means there are more available routes for satellites in LEO, which is one of the reasons why LEO is a very commonly used orbit. It is the orbit most commonly used for satellite imaging, as being near the surface allows it to take images of higher resolution. It is also the orbit used for the International Space Station ISS , as it is easier for astronauts to travel to and from it at a shorter distance.

Satellites in this orbit travel at a speed of around 7.