Tag: satellites

A Canadian satellite proves small is beautiful

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/canx-2.mp3[/podcast] Space satellites, typically, are big, expensive beasts, which is one reason we all cringe when one fails to achieve orbit, as happened on February 24 with NASA’s $280 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). Complex satellites like the OCO, which was intended to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide, are of course absolutely necessary for some tasks. …

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GPS

When I golf, I’m forever asking my wife how far it is to the pin (not that it really matters, the way I golf, but I like to keep informed). At Pelican Hill Golf Club in California, you don’t have to ask your wife. All you have to do is park your cart by your …

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Sputnik

  This Saturday marks the 40 anniversary of one of the most pivotal events in 20th century science:  the launch by the late Soviet Union of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. Nowadays, of course, we take satellites for granted:  we see photographs taken by satellites every evening on the news, we watch television signals …

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Satellites

Satellites have been much in the news recently–or, if you were trying to watch CBC Newsworld last week, in the absence of news. The failure of the Anik E-2 satellite drove home as nothing else could have just how important satellites have become to our everyday lives. (People really sit up and take note when …

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Teledetection

I recently saw two pictures of southern Saskatchewan taken one year apart, in the summers of 1983 and 1984. The photographs are primarily green and pink. In the first photo there’s plenty of green, but also plenty of pink. In the second photo, the green has just about overwhelmed the pink. That might sound like …

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