Satellites around the Earth are often used to relay TV stations to different places. A mobile ground crew doing an interview beams the signal up to the satellite, which then echoes it back down to the TV ground station. This obviously means that the mobile crew has to be able to find the satellite in the sky, and this is much easier if the satellite is always at the same place in the sky. This is why the “geosynchronous orbit” is so useful- a satellite in a geosynchronous has an orbital period of 24 hours, so it goes around the Earth in the same time as the Earth rotates, and, from the point of view of the mobile ground crew, the satellite is always in the same place in the sky. How far from the Earth center is a geosynchronous orbit and how fast does a satellite have to be moving to stay in one?
Satellites around the Earth are often used to relay TV stations to different places. A mobile ground crew doing an interview beams the signal up to the satellite, which then echoes it back down to the TV ground station. This obviously means that the mobile crew has to be able to find the satellite in the sky, and this is much easier if the satellite is always at the same place in the sky. This is why the “geosynchronous orbit” is so useful- a satellite in a geosynchronous has an orbital period of 24 hours, so it goes around the Earth in the same time as the Earth rotates, and, from the point of view of the mobile ground crew, the satellite is always in the same place in the sky. How far from the Earth center is a geosynchronous orbit and how fast does a satellite have to be moving to stay in one?
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