Question: How do satalites work

Gary Munnelly answered on 8 Nov 2018: last edited 8 Nov 2018 11:02 am

Conceptually you can think of satellites as being like big mirrors that orbit the earth. If we wanted to beam a signal flat across the surface of the planet for a long distance, it would be really hard, if not impossible. There is too much stuff like trees, mountains, houses, and people in the way. Moreover, because of the curvature of the earth, the signal would eventually fly off into space. With a satellite, we send the signal up into the sky and the satellite bounces it back down to where it needs to be on Earth. So we bounce the signal around all the stuff that could get in the way.

One really cool thing about satellites is that they are not floating. They are always falling. But because they are so high up they fall around the planet instead of falling onto it. It’s a crazy cool abuse of physics, but it works 😀