Advantages And Disadvantages Of Communication Satellites

Communication satellites, used for relaying anything from telephone signals, radio, and television signals, have been orbiting Earth since the first in 1962. Currently, there are more than 1,100 publically and privately owned active communication satellites in orbit with more than 2,600 inactive ones causing a significant amount of space debris. Importantly, communication satellites provide our security and our entertainment.
At a high altitude of nearly 36,000km from Earth, the geosynchronous orbit (GEO) is an ideal location for communication satellites that have a requirement to be over the same position of Earth. This “sweet spot” above Earth takes one full day to complete an orbit and is ideal for ground-based antennas that are stationary. Should the satellite be positioned at a zero degree incline, it would be in a geostationary orbit and lie on the equator. …show more content…
Military applications benefit from a constant surveillance over one location. Troops are monitored at a specific location and any activity can be compared by pictures from the satellites. On the civilian side, GEO satellites provide a variety of communication services at the correlating location with steady reliability. Due to the stationary position of the satellite, ground-based antennas are not required to adjust to the location of the satellite. This is definitely a benefit to satellite TV viewers as repositioning the dish would not be feasible. There are currently about 450 communication satellites at this higher orbit above Earth, nearly double that of low-Earth orbiting communication