There are so many objects out there in Space that it seems like a busy road with no traffic controller. All of these objects are orbiting around the earth. Now what is an orbit? It is a path taken by one object while revolving around another object.
Do you know what are these objects going round and round around the Earth?
Let us explore
A lot of satellites
So far hundreds of satellites have been sent into Earth’s orbit. A satellite is an object that orbits a planet. Any satellite that is above 160km of Earth and within 2000km is called a low orbit satellite. But what do these satellites do? They help us a lot in tracking the weather or sending signals to radios, televisions, cell phones, and computers.
How do we see the stars that are too far?
We use a telescope. There is a special telescope satellite called Hubble Telescope that keeps us sending information about our solar system and other stars.It got launched into space in 1990. It orbits around 600km above Earth. Hubble constantly captures images of our solar system and anything that it can see. Scientist have learnt a lot about space using this information.
A home in Space
International Space Station is a unique satellite. It is a home for astronauts and a research lab. It is a joint effort of five different countries and got launched in 1998. It weighs 450 tons that is 450 times heavier than a small passenger car. In size, it is as big as a soccer field.
Wow! There are many objects floating in the space, isn’t it amazing? How do we make sure that there are no collisions and broken pieces floating around? Well, we do that by tracking the Space junk.
We suggest parents to refer to a great infographic provided by Outerplaces that maps out dozens of space probes sent from Earth to exotic destinations like Jupiter and en route to Pluto. One such probes has even become the first man made object to leave our solar system.